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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24116320">Associations</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bingothefarmersdog/pseuds/Bingothefarmersdog'>Bingothefarmersdog</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Critical Role (Web Series)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst with a Happy Ending, Bathing/Washing, Body Dysphoria, Canon Backstory, Character Study, Childhood Memories, Conflict Resolution, Dissociation, Forced Nudity, Gen, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Invasion of Privacy, Lack of self care, Memory Loss, Mental Health Issues, Personal Growth, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Canon, Starvation, Suicidal Thoughts, Vomiting, Whump, caleb learns some goddamn self care, graphic depictions of mental illness</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 14:55:59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>24,725</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24116320</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bingothefarmersdog/pseuds/Bingothefarmersdog</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Definition:<br/><em>1. something linked in memory or imagination with a thing or person.</em><br/><em>2. the process of forming mental connections or bonds between sensations, ideas, or memories.</em></p>
<p>We all have a persona we carry, in our clothes, and our expressions, and our tone of voice. The way we look communicates who we are. And Caleb Widogast doesn’t bathe.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>161</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Excruciation</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Y’all, this is the first time I’ve ever tried to post something that doesn’t directly feature smut, and I feel like a horrible person for saying that. </p>
<p>Be warned that I have still rated this fic Explicit because of the triggering content which will be directly involved and described in this fic. Stay safe. </p>
<p>Without further ado, I present: a journey through memory, and Caleb Widogast’s convoluted relationship with grooming and self care.</p>
    </blockquote><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Trigger Warning! For: Self Induced Vomiting/Purging Behaviors, Suicidal Ideation, Extremely Self Critical Thoughts, Dissociation, Referenced Physical and Psychological Torture, and Self Harm. </p><p>Please take care of yourself.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>His first memories are of sweet things, clean and unsullied. They’re rose hued and vague. Less like unbroken chains, and more like vivid snippets, with hazy blanks in-between. It’s a thing that feels like memory, with no clear borders, or set lines. A general shape that evokes the idea of an image without the hard illustration itself. Memory of this distant past is an ephemeral clarity of random images loaded with too much meaning. </p><p>The freight of thoughts and emotions this memory carries is far too weighty for its simplistic nature. It’s just water, and a voice humming in his ear, as hands scrubbed through his hair. He pushed his little wooden duck under water and let it bob back to the surface. The memory is so short and sharp, all he remembers clearly is the duck. Looking at it, pushing it under the water, and then the way it rushed back to the surface like a cork.</p><p>It’s a good memory. Somehow. Despite it’s inadequacy, perhaps even because of it. This is a memory he hoards viciously. Clutches it in bruised and bloody fingers, holding it closer the harder it gets. Like his care with coins, he keeps these memories close to his hand, sorts them all neatly, counts them one by one. There aren’t many now, that have escaped unpolluted. Too many are painful, and more are muddied by the ancient poison of magic, like a twisted thread stitching broken things together where limbs should never be joined. When he was a child magic was exciting, now it’s just a chain of unrecognized prophesies that he never heeded until too late.  </p><p>But this. This one memory is a clean place, and he touches it carefully sometimes, when he can. When it’s the right kind of painful, and everything else is besmirched, sometimes he can bear to handle it. Only with careful fingers, and always dreading that he’s about to break it. But the glass prism endures, and then he’ll turn it over and over to look at the little boy trapped inside.    </p><p>&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;</p><p>Sometimes there’s a different water. This one is vigorous and exciting. It feels like pumping blood, a frayed edge of nerves, and the fission of excitement that made it hard to stop himself from smiling. He was bubbling underneath with it, itching to leap and shout, but restrained and quiet instead.</p><p>“Wash my hair for me.” Astrid commanded, and Bren leapt to obey.</p><p>She looked so beautiful. He remembers that. How hard it was to take his eyes off her. Her naked skin glistened when it was wet, and he still remembers running a wet hand over her shoulder, admiring the glitter.</p><p>Those moments, how they danced on the edge before the plunge, all feel rushed. They’re all too quick to spill over, to tumble off the edge, into other memories after that are crystal clear as well but he shies away from them now. They’re pleasant in a carnal way, and deeply painful in a carnal way too. How they fumbled, and laughed, found each other.</p><p>He pulls away before touching those. Almost never looks down that road. It can start out pleasant, but it always ends up poisoned. So much of Astrid, of her voice, of her laughter, of the things they did, are tied with darker endings. Some of the earlier indignities aren’t so bad, still half innocent, sweeter and less barbed.</p><p>The later things. Those were about survival. He knows that now. Attempts at control, and catharsis, and some way out of the web. They’re full of thorns and bleeding edges, because thorns and blood were all they knew, and neither of them could remember how to heal without hurting more. What they fell to later was brutal, and jagged, and they broke every rule they could break...but still.</p><p>He knows they were silently screaming now.</p><p>So he doesn’t touch those images. But the deep breath before the plunge: climbing gangle limbed and bony into a bath with Astrid, sometimes he’ll dance his fingers along the edge of that. He was so ungainly. A lanky, tangle headed boy, just growing big enough to have long arms and legs without the slightest idea what to do with them. Astrid was a teenager too, just starting to develop adult beauties, and complex thoughts.</p><p>It’s hard to remember that, with how domineering he remembers her. She was so old later, he can’t imagine her being youthful or naive about anything. And that’s what makes these moments so loaded, so overcharged with associations he’d rather not touch, now or ever. Things lead into each other, and its hard to pinpoint exactly where it goes wrong, only that he knows at some point it will.</p><p>Occasionally there’s a stringently masochistic part of him tempted by the crucible, that flirts with the idea of opening those doors, just to feel it torture him. Because it’s what he deserves is it not? Pain is a punishment, and punishment keeps him guilty, and he <em>should</em> be guilty. If he’s not reminding himself, who will keep count of all the forbidden deeds, or demand retribution for his sins?</p><p>He deserves to weep. He’s been the author of many, many, tears...</p><p>But more often than not, he’s a coward. He shrinks from that trail of breadcrumbs, and takes care where he puts his hands, because he knows that some of the surfaces will burn him. In this field of broken glass, he’s developed a carefully plotted road, that winds and circumvents, and stays well away from his corners. It doesn’t do well to tread that path carelessly, or even step foot on it at all.</p><p>So Caleb brushes against the edge of things, and steadfastly remembers to forget.</p><p>&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;</p><p>These memories never come when he wants them.</p><p>Sharp pain like a lance through his stomach, crouched over a chamber pot, with his fingers down his throat. His body knows what’s required of it, and he doubles over to vomit a moment later, emptying his stomach into the pot. At first this wasn’t so easy. His body was stubborn, and it didn’t like giving up what should be vital to it. Back then it took more effort, the gag reflex disappearing before he could empty himself of everything.</p><p>Now it comes sure and practiced, and he keeps going until he’s gagging around nothing. Even then the nausea still grips his stomach like a vice, twisting him tighter in waves. He clings to the chamber pot, trembling weakly, while he continues to dry heave. It’s not about the gag reflex anymore, he knows. His fingers aren’t down his throat now.</p><p>This is the distress of everything else, hitting him all at once.</p><p>He wants this. Wants it just enough to forget that he doesn’t want it. Just enough to toe the line and balance his way a little farther, and a little farther still, onto this razor edge that he walks. Somehow he makes these goals worth it, and manages just one step in front of the other. Even though he’s exhausted, even though he’s on the edge of pleading for mercy every time he meets his teacher’s eyes over breakfast. He lies awake all night and fantasizes about Ikithon letting them stop, but obediently crawls on bleeding hands a little further every morning.</p><p>Looking back now, he sees how unattainable that goal was...and how much he sacrificed to attain it.</p><p>When the muscle spasms finally pass he falls still, huddling limp over the pot, with his clammy forehead propped up on the rim. As the stomach upset calms down, it’s just enough to let his exhaustion in, washing over him in a numbing wave. Bone deep fatigue suddenly takes hold, and for that eternal moment he doesn’t want to move ever again.</p><p>Instead he just sits, and breathes, and exists. With the chamber pot to hold him up, and his responsibilities forgotten, he lets the minutes drag by. For once, just this once, he’ll be selfish. The consequences aren’t enough to move him, and he allows himself to be lazy. Just this once. Nothing is worth leaving this haven. Just him, and the silence, and the solid comfort of this chamber pot holding him up so that he doesn’t have to support his weight. No tests, no expectations, no performance. He’ll just...give up. Right here. Right now. Give up, and stop caring anymore.</p><p>When he shifts his weight to relieve pressure on a deadened armpit two minutes later, the feeble exertion breaks the spell. His mind wanders back from that fantasy, and the real world drifts into semi-focus again, hovering around the edges of his perception like a fog he can’t see very far into. His body is there again, insisting on being experienced once more. Returning blood flow makes his numbed arm tingle, sparking painfully in his fingers, as his muscled cramp up.</p><p>Wearily, he opens his eyes, and looks down into the chamber pot. Acid stench rises up from his vomit at the bottom, but he’s too tired to care, as he absently looks down at it. Things are better when he does this. Not by much...or really at all. But still. An empty stomach takes the edge off just a little.</p><p>Because he’s going to break during this. His body always cracks under pressure, and it’s humiliating. With a drained bladder and an empty stomach there’s one less thing to loose control of. One safety measure he can cling to. While he knows its futile and insignificant, with the abject torment ahead, every trench and barrier helps. He’ll take a paper barricade, if it’s all he can get.</p><p>Tiredly he spits into the chamber pot. Doing it doesn’t really take the taste of stomach acid away, but the action comes on autopilot, and Bren drifts along with it. Slowly, distantly, like he’s pulling himself through syrup, he sits up. Everything about him feels paper thin and faded. Eyes dry and gritty, abdominal muscles sore, and the low grade headache he’s been enduring for days (weeks?) throbbing behind his temples.</p><p>Better than before, he coaches himself, and hopes he means it.</p><p>He manages to drag himself up from the floor, and just far enough to reach the basin and pitcher of water on the sideboard. Once there, he leans his shoulder against the wall, letting it prop him up, and begins to wash his hands. The soap stings where he’s chewed his fingernails too far back, and the rough scrubbing he imposes on himself makes him bleed where his knuckles are scraped from a blunder in one of the training sessions. After his hands are red and chafed, he finally turns to the task he hasn’t been looking forward to. Taking the bandages off.</p><p>Carefully he picks away the strips of cotton until his forearms are exposed, too pale and fleshless, bony from skipped or rejected meals. The skin is pallid and waxy, a sallow colorless white that’s almost translucent looking from lack of sunlight. Clots of blood are soaked into the cotton gauze underneath the bandages, like twisted scarlet blooms across the unstained white, and each one stings to remove. He pulls back each pad, hissing under his breath with the pain, as the dried blood gluing his skin to the cotton is slowly peeled away.</p><p>Until they’re exposed. Backgrounded by such pale skin, the cuts are ghastly looking, clean as they are. In that wan, ashy skin, they look irritated and too red, compared to the skin’s general lack of color. Each one is surgically stitched in neat orderly seams, but leftover dried blood still turns them gory. Very gently, he cups handfuls of water, and pours it over the cuts. Nothing really helps, and in the end his best efforts still make him hiss with pain, the cuts are so tender.</p><p>With a resigned shudder, he grabs the soap and begins to scrub, washing away the dried blood. It’s crusted and stubborn, and the burning of the soap makes his eyes sting. Finally a scab flakes away, exposing the sewed flesh underneath, and then more begins to loosen as well, until most of his cuts are exposed. Accidentally he tugs the injured skin too hard, and a thin ribbon of fresh blood dribbles down his wrist into the bowl.</p><p>Then something breaks. A quiet, slender thing, so deep inside you can’t even see it. Something tiny and fragile snaps, a delicate fracture running across the center of it, and his balance is overturned completely. Gritting his teeth, he rakes his fingers down into the cut that’s started to bleed, ripping the stitching out. It hurts, but a good hurt. A deeply satisfying hurt, clean and fulfilling. He keeps going until they’re all bleeding, every perfect one, completely ruined and open. Then he claws down further. His fingers bite down into wounded flesh, and then tear, raking four bloody lines down the length of his arm. The skin shreds apart, the pain explodes like a cleansing fire through his bones, and he bleeds.</p><p>It comes in gushing floods, overtopping the washbasin, and pooling across the floor. Sobbing through his teeth, he turns on his right arm, trembling fingers ripping his skin apart in the same way he shredded the left. Both spurt heavily, and he watches the scarlet waves splatter across the floor, weirdly fascinated. He tips on his feet, and feels the flagstones strike the back of his head, the pain somewhere outside of himself. And bleeds, and bleeds, and bleeds.</p><p>He sighs, and reaches for a hand towel to wipe away the stray ribbon of blood.</p><p>That’s a road he’s looked down more and more. He can’t help it. The thoughts come. Contemplating it feels half comforting, half taboo. A string he shouldn’t touch, a thread he shouldn’t find the end of. Every second spent looking down that path feels like it’s a force, and he can’t contemplate it, or it’s going to suck him in. It’s a coward’s escape. A surrender. A <em>failure</em>. He’s a sinner for even thinking about it.</p><p>But it’s there.</p><p>And he thinks.</p><p>In moments like this, that gentle answer comes back, and promises again. And every time, it’s harder and harder not to listen. So far he’s ultimately rejected it. So far he’s found an answer that pushes it back. Never completely banished, but always...postponed...Not yet. The inner voice always resolves.</p><p>It doesn’t say Never.</p><p>Not yet. But it’s ready if you need it. There’s always the other door. You’ll always have a way out. And that’s what’s so much harder to let go of, because the forbidden comfort of it is deeply, deeply attractive. It brings his power back: this alternative, this bolt hole at his back. This contingency plan at his fingertips makes him autonomous again. So he keeps it, laid away at the back of his mind, and promises himself.</p><p>If you need it.</p><p>By the time he’s finally finished scrubbing the dried blood away, he’s breathing hard through clenched teeth, and his hands are trembling. It’s over though, his arms are clean, and the soapy water in the basin is a diluted cloudy pink. He reaches for a hand towel, and gingerly pats himself dry, trying not to touch the cuts.</p><p>Then he’s moving. And the world is going fuzzy again. He walks mechanically, and the fear mounts up until he’s choking on it. But somewhere between the terror in his mind, and the emotionless shell of his body, the screaming is smothered out, and dies a pitiful death. It feels like walking in a nightmare. Floating in a poisonous fog, body over-stuffed with cottony numbness that sweetly strangles him. He’s watching a hideous dream now. One where he’s being drugged to sleep, but can’t make a sound, and can’t call for help.</p><p>His knuckles rap on a door, and he drowns in limbo for the eternal instant of awaiting an answer.</p><p>No one responds. Relief washes down his spine, as nothing but silence greets him, and the voice he’s dreading doesn’t come. Dazed and floaty, he turns away, directionless now that he has no clear path to follow. Walking in a fog, he wanders back to his room. It’s only a cold emotionless barrack, with nothing inside but the spare starved possessions he shares with Wulf and Astrid, but the sight of a bed—any bed—is welcome. He tumbles into his cot, and he’s sobbing before his head fully hits the pillow. It feels like heaven, sinking into sleep, even though the cot is so flat and hard it’s little better than boards. At last he has a chance to sleep, and it doesn’t matter where, just so long as he can.</p><p>“Enter.” A cold voice calls.</p><p>He does.</p><p>And there Trent is. The man is standing at his desk with his back turned to the door, slightly bent as he writes something in a ledger. A slender box stands at his elbow, and a pulse of nausea drags over Bren’s form at the sight of it, unable to tear his eyes away. There aren’t many things he can confidently say he hates about all this. It’s too tangled and sickened, wrapped up in layers and layers of good leading into bad, and bad shaped like the fulfillment of good. But he does hate that box with the feral passion that only abject terror can inspire.</p><p>“Come here, Bren.” Ikithon says, still bent over his work.</p><p>He does. And in the movement between cowering at the door and standing at attention by Trent’s elbow, are a thousand fantasized scenarios where he doesn’t obey this time. Where he turns and leaves, or seizes the box and shatters its contents on the floor, or finds his knees at Ikithon’s feet and incoherently begs for mercy. Instead he comes to heel and Trent’s elbow, and numbly waits.</p><p>The mage doesn’t look up from his book, but prompts “show me your arm.” </p><p>Mechanically he presents one forearm, and continues to hold it out obediently, as Ikithon’s quill ignores him.</p><p>His teacher straightens, and Bren watches as the man takes his forearm. Ikithon looks at it carefully, turning the arm to see it from every angle. Finally he releases Bren’s arm again, and looks at him.</p><p>“You look tired.” The mage comments.</p><p>His eyes rove over Bren’s face, and then the man smiles kindly. “I’ve pushed you too hard.” He says. “You need rest...go sleep, my boy. We’ll come back to this tomorrow.”</p><p>Bren fails to bite back a smile at that picture, sarcastically amused by the sheer ludicrousness of it.</p><p>As if.</p><p>His teacher straightens, and Bren’s eyes instantly seek the floor, quickly banishing the dangerous humor from his face. Ikithon turns towards him, and the weight of him makes Bren fight down the urge to hunch his shoulders, struggling not to cower under him. The man takes his arm, and Bren flinches in spite of himself, as if pained by it. Instantly noxious shame curdles his stomach, guilt clawing up his spine at the weakness, the exposure of cracking like that in front of Trent. The distress snowballs, and he actually shudders, trembling fearfully as he bites his lip to button up a whimper that nearly escapes. All tokens of fragility he shouldn’t be too weak to control.</p><p>But somehow, miraculously, Trent doesn’t comment. He’s distant and preoccupied, unconcerned with Bren’s flaws at the moment. Carefully turning his student’s arm, Trent inspects the cuts, clinical and evaluating.</p><p>“Acceptable,” he says, after a terrifying silence.</p><p>Bren feels like crying in relief when he hears it. Tears are weakness like everything else though, and so he does nothing but wait. Small and submissive beneath Trent’s gaze, waiting for the next order to come, and stubbornly guarding his mind from doing anything else. He’s not supposed to think for himself. Only what Trent wants him to.</p><p>“Go sit.” Ikithon barks, turning back to his ledger.</p><p>Obediently he turns and walks to the chair. It’s the only other thing he hates with unadulterated loathing: that chair. Somewhere down the line, that’s going to spark a glimmer of pride in him, knowing that he had enough fortitude to rebel even that much. That even when he was broken in like a beaten dog brought to heel, addicted to Trent’s indoctrinations, he still hated that chair. Still abhorred it with as much vigor as he could, given how much it menaced him.</p><p>It’s small comfort with everything else he remembers. The anger never stopped him. It never made him fight back, never made him rebel, never made him turn on his teacher. No, he did what Trent told him to. He sat in the chair, bit down on the gag so its rubber mouth piece nudged between his teeth, secured it around the back of his head, and then slipped his arms into the leather cuffs, waiting for Trent to draw them tight. Because it was what Ikithon had trained him to do.</p><p>Even though he hated every second of it.</p><p>His anger is small comfort with everything else that he remembers coming after. He still wakes up screaming at the memories of this, panics when he tastes rubber, can’t bear to let Nott touch his wrists. Because of the screaming, and the blood, and the agony.</p><p>Though the mere idea of getting strapped down is enough to make his skin crawl, and the actual experience is enough to make him go insane, he can’t even hate the memory of his restraints. Even though the cuffs left rings of bruises on his arms, even though the gag made his teeth hurt from biting down so hard on it. In the bloody, writhing, hyperventilating thick of it, that gag and those leather straps were the only things holding him together. The rubber mouthpiece that smothered him and those cuffs that made him helpless, kept him secured and restrained, where there was only so far or so deep he could fracture. He hated them, like he hated the box, and the chair, and vomiting in the chamber pot. But like Trent he loved them, and couldn’t turn away.</p><p>So while the tiny rebellion makes him smile, it’s a joyless thing, with the memory of how little he fought for anything else. The goal was always impossible, but he still groveled for it, so what use can he say his second thoughts were? His pain was always just that: nothing but pain. Worthless. But he convinced himself it meant something more than wrong. Does he really have any room to congratulate himself for hurting, if he willingly submitted to being hurt?</p><p>It’s a ridiculous farce, and he hates himself for indulging in it. Just like he hated everything else. Without doing anything to change.</p><p>&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt; </p><p>It feels strange being here again. This should be familiar and comforting, like coming home. But the shapes are all wrong. Everything feels so...far away. Not like waking up, but like falling asleep again. Like floating in a dream that is almost unpleasant <em>because </em>of how soft and pleasurable it is.</p><p>Dunking his hands in the wash bucket, he reaches for the soap. It’s homemade, and coarse, irritating his skin just a little. He’s felt it a hundred times before, but this time it’s not real, like he’s not living it anymore. Like he’s acting out a game of pretend in a toy house, with toy soap, and toy people. He scrubs but it doesn’t hurt, carefully lathering his hands until they’re perfectly clean.</p><p>Returning home feels unreal. Its been months since Bren was connected to any of this. Even his letters aren’t real anymore. After Trent started reading them, and telling him when things he shared were too sensitive, he’d learned to fit the mould. Censoring himself had quickly become second nature, painstakingly maintaining an empty communication, that held no real value.</p><p>With all that gulf between who he was and who he is now, Home is a tonally dissonant lie. It doesn’t accord with his world, doesn’t fit him properly anymore. <em>Trent</em> is reality now, and without him Bren’s left adrift. Until he got here, he would have sworn this was what he wanted more than anything else, but now that he’s here, its all deeply unsettling.</p><p>It’s just puppetry. A nice story, and entertaining visuals, but inherently fake.</p><p>“This is a lesson somehow,” Astrid had said on the journey, breaking a silence that had been reigning for the last several hours. “He’s trying to teach us something.”</p><p>Eodwulf, had only grunted, where he was slouched in the corner with his hat over his face. Astrid was taking up the entirety of the opposite bench, leaning against one wall, with her legs slung out across the seat. Bren hadn’t answered at all, only cast a brief glance from the shadows where his hair fell in his eyes, before looking back out at the rain washed hills again.</p><p>The weather outside the coach was just as gray and lifeless as the mood within, shrouded in storm light and washed out into endless dim brown that rolled past utterly unchanging. Nothing about it was remotely interesting, which made it easy to get lost in, drifting aimlessly for hours. He’d lost himself in the view again, and almost forgotten what they were talking about, before Astrid spoke again. Not because it took a long time for her to speak—it was only a half minute’s brooding silence—but because his focus was worn down to threads these days, vacant and hollow.</p><p>It was getting so hard to stay present anymore...</p><p>“Just think about it,” Astrid broke in on his thoughts, making him startle as he remembered where they were.</p><p>Wulf groaned sullenly.</p><p>“I mean, you can hardly call this a real visit.” The girl went on regardless, ignoring Eodwulf’s sourness. Out of the corner of his eye Bren could see her running her fingers through her cropped hair, a sure sign that she was deeply occupied with some kind of problem. “Only two days, after all these months? It isn’t about taking a break. We aren’t getting enough time to make any of this meaningful, or say anything important. And since when has Master Ikithon ever given us anything without an ulterior motive?”</p><p>Uneasy silence answered her, both boys more chilled than they’d like to admit by her words. Bren hunched his shoulders, pressing his forehead against the glass in front of him, and tried to find oblivion again. Of course it wouldn’t take him when he needed it.</p><p>“I think we’re supposed to figure things out is all.” Astrid said, when no one else spoke. “If there’s a lesson here, or something Trent wants us to take away from this, we need to be on the lookout for it. That’s one of the first things he told us: don’t ever go into things blind.”</p><p>“Shut the fuck up Astrid!” Eodwulf burst out, snatching his hat off and throwing it at the girl across from him.</p><p>“I’m just being alert!”</p><p>“You’re being fucking stupid.” He shot back, sharp edged and cruel. “It’s not about being the only smart girl playing a boy’s game now, Astrid. Master Ikithon doesn’t want special snowflakes anymore, he wants trained soldiers. So stop trying to be clever, and keep your goddamn head down, or he’s going to tear your throat out.”</p><p>Venomous silence fell, which meant either Astrid was too hurt to speak, or to angry. If she was hurt, she’d want Bren to back her up. But he couldn’t do that, because he had no thoughts of his own anymore, and couldn’t find the words. And if she was too angry, she’d only resent it if he tried to do anything, because she would feel condescended to, and lash out at him to prove she didn’t need his pity. So Bren took the middle road, and did nothing, steadfastly ignoring the conversation.</p><p>“I get it, you’re smart,” Eodwulf said placatingly after a tense silence. “But you need to turn that shit off. Just look at Bren.”</p><p>Hearing his name made Bren hunch his shoulders, casting a discomfited glance over his shoulder. Eodwulf was grinning, and jostled Bren with a nudge from his boot. “He’s got the art of spacing-out down to a science,” the dark haired boy laughed, half fond, half teasing. “Look at him: he’s practically a vegetable.”</p><p>Bren laughed awkwardly, trying to shift in his seat so Eodwulf’s foot couldn’t reach him, without much success. Casting a look at Astrid’s face for a split second, their eyes met. The girl snorted derisively and looked away, her eyes scorching with cold and bitter.</p><p>It was a new thing, this commentary on his behavior from them both. He’d been loosing objectivity for a good long while now, so long that he couldn’t pinpoint when he’d started drifting away from himself. But now it was so pervasive, that they all knew it was happening, and both his friends had their opinions about it.</p><p>Eodwulf chose to laugh about—and at—Bren’s distance. He would teasingly snap his fingers in Bren’s face to get his attention, do things while watching to see how long he could keep it up before Bren noticed, and popped out of unexpected places to try and startle him. So far Eodwulf could get away with the pranks for quite a long time before being noticed...and Bren was very, very, jumpy.</p><p>For her part Astrid had snapped at him too, and poked him more than once, irritated by his changed behavior. But while she might tease and make fun as well, it was clearly from a more barbed place. Fueled by her frustration and wounded pride, not Eodwulf’s reckless mischief making a joke out of pain. The relationship she wanted was with an alert power hungry Bren, not a distant shell that never paid attention to her anymore, and she reminded him of it every chance she could by giving him the cold shoulder. Making herself unattainable, until he exerted himself like she wanted him to.</p><p>It wasn’t an effort he made very often anymore.</p><p>Strange, he thinks now, when he remembers this moment: how callous they both were about his demeanor. How careless. Not intensionally cruel, but completely desensitized and compassionless. He was falling apart in front of them, he realizes now, tenuously clinging to his body by the frailest threads. Eodwulf laughed, Astrid criticized, and neither showed the slightest concern.</p><p>They were all broken shells, he realizes now. All empty in their own ways. Bren lived his life half asleep, Eodwulf mocked the atrocities, Astrid obsessed over her ambitions; each buying oblivion. They were so deadened and inoculated to the horrors, none of them had enough humanity left to care about any kind of hurting. Not even his own untethered apathy.</p><p>“Bren?”</p><p>Adrenaline scorches up his spine, as he jumps at the interruption. For a moment he’s left reeling, trying to reconcile his surroundings with Astrid and Eodwulf in his head, the two settings painfully spliced so he exists in both at once. Then a knock on the door makes him flinch hard, cowering back from the door as fear rasps down his spine, and he’s forced back into himself.</p><p>“Bren are you washed up yet?”</p><p>He blinks and looks down at his hands, still covered in soap suds. The skin is raw and irritated by the harsh soap, over-scrubbed and puffy. But he can’t remember doing it. The gap makes him shudder, and he instinctively looks away from the sight, as if he can forget about it when he’s not looking at them. That makes him remember his mother’s voice on the other side of he door, and he casts about desperately for what to do or say to get him out of this corner. For a moment he’s possessed by an idiotic instinct to hide his hands behind his back, like a guilty child, and he halfway obeys the impulse before remembering himself. Recalling his wits, he clears his throat awkwardly and calls out, “<em>ja</em>, one moment,” stepping forward to rinse his soapy hands in the bucket.</p><p>When he opens the door, his mother is still there, her eyes warm and merry. He meets the look with a careful smile, unconsciously drifting into a relaxed form of attention, with his feet spread and his hands behind his back. It’s more natural to him than anything else at this point.</p><p>“My boy,” she says, and her hand reaches out to cup his cheek.</p><p>The intimacy makes him shudder, shaken to the core by a gentleness he hasn’t felt in such a long time. It breaks through his barriers, and for that perfect moment he completely belongs to her again. Trent’s watchdog is blessedly silent, and its just Bren, a softer, more innocent Bren, captured under her fingers.</p><p>“I see you...” she murmurs lovingly. “Mothers always know.”</p><p>“I hate him.” Bren finds himself whispering, barely audible but so sincere he didn’t know he had it in him, until the words are hanging on open air. “I <em>hate</em> him. He never lets us rest. I think about death all the time. It’s been weeks since I got a full nights sleep. The only reason you can’t see all the injuries is because he gave us healing potions before we left, and told us not to talk about what he does to us. And I’m just...so tired...”</p><p>“Close your eyes.” His mother’s voice breaks in, jarringly cheerful, and he blinks back to find her hovering excitedly in front of him.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Close your eyes!” She insists playfully, reaching up to cover them with a calloused hand. He smothers a nervous instinct to flinch away from her touch, vividly reminded of Trent striking him. “Supper is a surprise, and you’re not allowed to peek.”</p><p>“<em>Ja</em>, ok, I’m not looking.” Bren carefully plays along, conjuring up a smile that feels like all the proper muscles moving, and just the right amount of teeth. “I’m going to run into something and make a fool of myself, with my eyes closed like this.”</p><p>“I’ll help you.” Her voice reassures him, and her hand takes his.</p><p>He cringes inwardly at the unexpected touch, and shakes it off to repair his faltering smile. Led by the hand, he fumbles after his mother, tension winding his shoulders tighter with every step. Being blinded is deeply unsettling, and he cracks his eyes open under the shelter of lashes, just to gain a sliver of visuals in the blackness. It won’t help much, with how narrow the view is, but at least he’s got a point of reference, and it’s just enough to keep him reasonably in control of the panic that wants so badly to escape.</p><p>“Alright!” His mother says, laughing, “open your eyes.”</p><p>The table is laid with their best china, a tea-set from his long dead grandmother that he’s only seen used twice in his entire life, during special occasions. Spread on a neat tablecloth, the tiny little cups and saucers look like a wedding feast, laid out carefully. In the middle of the table, clearly the focal point of honor, is a platter of what looks like square buns, baked golden brown. Behind it all sits his father, grinning at the head of the table, with his napkin already tucked in.</p><p>“<em>Beirock</em>!” His mother announces triumphantly at his elbow. “I didn’t know if you had a chance to eat any in Rexxentrum, so I made you some.”</p><p>“This is perfect.” He feels himself saying somewhere outside himself, probably smiling with delight. “Thank you.”</p><p>Inwardly he wishes there wasn’t a table cloth and fancy china. Now he’s going to have to be careful about not messing it up, or he’s going to spill something, and then they’ll be angry at him. And the <em>beirock</em> is daunting, because it’s ostensibly his favorite. They’ll expect him to stuff himself like he used to, and the prospect makes him nauseous. It’s been a long time since he’s been able to eat more than a few bites of anything.</p><p>They’re all taking a place at the table though, and from a great distance he knows he’s playing the part. He’s eating exactly as much as he’s supposed to, and smiling as much as he should be, and saying all kinds of cheerful things to these people he doesn’t recognize anymore. But it’s all so very far away. Like he’s watching it from the other side of a window, an outsider observing someone else’s family, not his own. As if he’s just a ghost, watching a set of actors playacting dinner. It’s looks like real life, but it follows an outline of scripted events. Like a play it’s all staged, and like a play there’s no way to change what the characters are doing, so in the end it’s ultimately useless.</p><p>And that’s whats so bitterly painful about this moment in hindsight. When it’s just a memory, and the memory truly <em>is</em> as unchangeable as it felt at the time. The fact that this moment, this last precious instant, was so twisted and ruined. He was so warped out of shape and riddled with infection that what should have been a beautiful meal connecting with the people he loved, is a diseased abomination instead. That even when out of Trent’s clutches, freed from his chains, he acted like a prisoner. That even from so far away, Trent could ruin his home.</p><p>This is the last time he ever sits to eat with his parents, and he couldn’t even see them, before the End.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Beirock is actually a thing, and it’s delicious. Also super easy, if you want to try and make some yourself.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Mute</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Trigger Warning! For: Dissociation, Mild Descriptions of Abuse, and Forced Nudity </p><p>Please be careful with yourselves!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>For Caleb Widowgast, memories are a painful thing...sometimes because of the literal pain remembered in them. And there is pain of many types for his unwelcome remembering, laid out like a rotten feast. Those are swollen and poisoned wounds, oozing puss and blood, long claimed and gnawed over by maggots and festering mold.</p><p>And then there’s not remembering. Memories of forgetting. Memories of unmeaning. Memories of a lightless void, an empty box, a little death.</p><p>Memories of <em>nothing at all</em>.</p><p>“Hey sweetie, I’m just gonna let myself in...”</p><p>He doesn’t have a name. He’s just...Nothing. A yawning pit for bits of thought and scraps of lucidity to tumble down, and never strike the bottom, making no impact and leaving no echo.</p><p>“How are we feeling today? Are you going to look at me this time?”</p><p>A pair of shoes infringe on the edge of his notice, breaking the space where his vacant vision rests, and interrupting equilibrium. There’s an arm hanging close to his face that he sees out of the corner of his eye, but doesn’t actually notice. </p><p>“Bren?”</p><p>The hand flaps in his face, trying to prompt a response.</p><p>“Come on, honey, lets get your eyes on me.”</p><p>An unexpected blow strikes his face, snapping his head to the side, and his vision goes white. When it comes back to him, he’s looking at a woman who’s kneeling in front of him, with a smile on her face. He’s never seen her before.</p><p>“There he is.” She coos, only a phantom on the other side of this divide between them. “Those are the pretty blue eyes I like to see. Very good!”</p><p>Her hand caresses his stinging cheek, and somewhere far away a bit of Bren cringes inwardly. It lasts only for the barest fraction of a second, and dies out instantly, guttering like a candle flame choked of oxygen. Like every other scrap, this pitiful flicker of life smothers, and tumbles down the pit soundlessly. Where all of him goes to die.</p><p>“You’re getting a bath today!” the woman tells him brightly, and the inward cringe comes again. She’s so loud.</p><p>He likes it quiet.</p><p>“I’m gonna have you come along with me, sweetie, and we’re gonna get you washed ok?”</p><p>The woman rises and her hand pulls his arm, but he does’t follow her coaxing. With a sigh she digs both her hands into his armpits, hauling him up, and he stumbles to his feet. Once on his legs, he holds his own weight, swaying dreamily at her side as he fixates on her shoulder. There’s a loose thread on her collar.</p><p>Her hand takes his, the touch completely unrecognized, and she uses the grip as a handle to coax him after her as they leave the room. Walking slowly, she plods along as he numbly trails after. The pace is little more than a crawl, slowed by the damper of his limping gait, barely shuffling after her. Only the continued tug of her hand keeps him moving, invigorated by her autonomy, and he drifts after her in a vacant haze.</p><p>“Lenna, I need you to change the sheets on Dareth’s bed.” A strange voice says, and the tugging on his hand stops.</p><p>He falls still as she does, and hovers at her side in a colorless dream. The voices turn into disordered words, the walls change into blank voids, and everything blurs together. No longer tethered to his body, he drifts off, and everything disappears. Even he disappears, melting away as he forgets to exist.</p><p>“Shyreen is talking to us, sweetie.” A woman’s voice says, and there’s a hand pinching his arm so hard that it feels like it’s going to break his skin. He follows the arm and sees a woman, standing at his side...</p><p>He’s never seen her before.</p><p>There’s a loose thread on her collar.</p><p>“Let’s say goodbye to her, alright?” The strange woman prompts.</p><p>Another touch pats his arm on the other side, and he looks down at the hand there, noticing pale nails in dark brown skin.</p><p>He doesn’t like all this touching. It hurts. Makes his arms itch with the need to peel his skin off. Bad thoughts come from the touching. Bad people used to do that, and he inwardly cringes away from it.</p><p>The moment of clarity and revulsion lasts only for a few seconds. It’s immediately washed out by an answering backlash of numbness that pours over him so thickly he forgets to think, smothered by all the fog. When he remembers his eyes again, he’s looking at his arm but the dark hand there is gone, and the two strangers with him are chuckling about something.</p><p>“Baby steps,” the one says with a laugh.</p><p>“No steps at all, more like.” The woman shoots back, jerking his arm so that he stumbles against her, fumbling for his balance. “Honestly, I start loosing patience with him after twenty minutes. He’s perfectly fucking useless!”</p><p>“It’s literally your job to baby-sit nutcases, Lenna.”</p><p>“Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”</p><p>“Means you get paid for it.” The dark woman says and her vague profile in the corner of his eye begins to move away. “And you don’t have to like it, if you get paid.”</p><p>The woman at his side laughs sourly, and jerks his arm again. “Come on, you...Let’s get this over with.”</p><p>When she starts walking him again, its much more quickly, no longer so patiently accommodating his pace. The rapid movement makes him stumble several times, forced to hurry after her as he clings to her arm in order to stay upright. Its so uncomfortable and rushed that he can’t divorce himself from the experience and float, feeling like a battered ship in a stormy sea instead.</p><p>Finally it ends, as she roughly shoves him through a door into some other room, and lets him fall still. Breathing hard and dizzy, he continues to persistently drag at her arm, holding himself up by the sleeve. She yanks away after a moment and leaves him tottering with nothing, overbalanced and uncertain on his legs. Equilibrium just starts to reassert itself, slowly stitching back together; then she comes back and rudely shatters the cottony oblivion just beginning to form.</p><p>In a series of short, abrupt movements, the caretaker begins yanking off his clothes. And <em>this</em> he really doesn’t like. She peels his shirt up over his head, and he fumbles to try and hold his arms down and resist her. The attempt is flawed and weak, easily overpowered by her greater assertiveness, and she forces the fabric up over his head. Next she tugs open the drawstring at his waist, and he fights that too, trying to grip her arm and push it away. He’s no more successful than before, and in short order he’s stripped naked with little chance to resist.</p><p>Cold air bites into his skin harshly, raising goosebumps and making him shiver, no longer shielded by his clothes. Steering him by the hips she moves him again, this time to stand in a tub of chilly water that laps at his calves, and makes his feet numb. A wet rag follows as she begins to scrub him down, and he hunches miserably under it, hugging himself to try and keep warm. The water is frigidly cold, and the air on his damp skin makes it more so.</p><p>And she touches so many places. Worse than his arms and his legs, but his face his abdomen too, rasping her rag over every exposed inch of him to scrub places he wants to forget about. But her invasions make him remember that his body exists, and he doesn’t <em>like it</em>.</p><p>The cotton clogging his mind blunts the edges of things a little, but doesn’t remove it far enough. It just turns the whole experience into an unpleasant daze. Like a sleepwalker moving in two realities at once, the two perceptions merge, becoming a half lucid, half dormant blur. Cold and discomfort nips around the edges of his numbness, like pain hidden under an opiate, kept at bay but barely controlled. Only a thin pretense at forgetfulness hides the humiliation behind a mask.</p><p>When its over she lets him climb out of the water, with her hand there to help him keep his balance. Then she bundles him up in a towel and the discomfort finally begins to ease. Having something covering his naked body is a relief, both to the physical unease of cold and shivering self, and the inner unease of being forced out into the open. The dying voice of Bren doesn’t like being naked, doesn’t like feeling touched, invaded, and helpless. And having something to cover himself mollifies that tormented voice. Drugged and enervated, the frail shadow of him goes to sleep again, which just leaves the rest of him: the nameless forgetful part.</p><p>Somewhere far away the rough woman is still grooming his body. She’s busy slopping foam on his cheeks so she can shave them, but its ignorable now, and he pays no attention to it. Instead he sinks deep under oblivion, snippets of sensation breaking through like air bubbles floating up toward the surface, growing dimmer as it gets darker. Once he wakes up just enough to feel a little pinch of pain when her razor catches his cheek wrong, but it’s not enough to fight the current pulling him down, and he sinks again.</p><p>The layers of warmth and fog only pad him down more thickly as she begins to dress him again, replacing the makeshift shelter of his towel with much more concrete clothing. By the time he’s fully dressed again his head is a fogbank, and the real world is just a mass of vague shapes washed out and hidden by the mist.</p><p>Those are memories he cowers from. Not because they’re painful, not because he was kicked or hit or tortured. He runs from them because they aren’t anything at all. Because they’re broken, and like a stain or a smell or a persistent limp it comes back.</p><p>He broke, and the fracture is <em>still there</em>.</p><p>The disconnect still relentlessly drags at him. The fog comes back, making a struggle of seemingly innocuous moments, fighting desperately for enough clarity to focus and connect with himself. To stay in the Now: all the things happening around him, all the people talking to him, all the things he <em>should</em> be thinking and feeling. Not the...whatever it is...</p><p>He runs. Not because he wants to leave it behind, but because it’s chasing him. And it catches up when he’s too tired to run anymore, exhausted and gasping for breath. Then he remembers what he wants to forget, not because it’s painful, but because isn’t.</p><p>&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt; </p><p>It’s so strange, how the mind twists and frames things. This should be a memory he hates, everything about it is so full of undiluted fear, the pure terror of something hunted. But its not.</p><p>Not completely</p><p>He’s running, and it hurts. All he has is the running. Keep going. Keep moving until you drop. The rhythm of his feet against the earth pounding up his legs, the stitch in his side, the burning in his throat, the ache throbbing in his head. The only things protecting him is the flimsy shirt on his back, and the cloth slippers on his feet. Every rock bites through the soles of his shoes like jagged teeth, branches whip his arms and face. But he can’t raise his arms to protect himself because of the books clutched to his chest, and he continues to thrash his way through and over brambles with reckless desperation.</p><p>A twisted root catches his foot, and he trips forward. Like it’s happening in slow motion the books fly from his arms, his balance overturns, and he hits the ground hard. The pain, dull at first, turns into bright incandescent scorching after the first numb shock. Burning agony scorches up his arms and legs where he’s skinned his hands and knees, blood beading on his palms, but he doesn’t have time for any of it. Instead he blindly scrambles after his books, snatching them back to his chest, and lurches to his feet.</p><p>He casts a quailing glance over his shoulder into the darkness behind him, then staggers on again, nearly bent double from the running pains scorching up his sides. Pain throbs up his legs, one mass of universal torment, so that he can’t tell things apart anymore. His knees are bleeding, his feet are raw, and his calves are cramping. But they end up fusing, because he doesn’t have time to try and tell the individual pains apart.</p><p>Instead he runs. And trips, and falls, and rises, and falls again. Over and over and over. Until the pounding of blood in his brain mirrors beat of his feet against the earth, both throbbing with one long line of terror, drawn from head to toe.</p><p>But behind it all is not fear. Even while he sobs for breath, adrenaline igniting his blood. Even while he shakes with weariness and hyperventilates, whimpers when he looks back and forces himself to take just one more bloody step, until he’s staggering through the feeble limping attempts at a flat out sprint he can’t sustain anymore. Behind it all is giddy exhilaration.</p><p>Because he <em>feels</em> again.</p><p>He’s thinking. He’s moving. He’s doing things on his own. There’s actually thoughts darting through his head, and they’re clear, and coherent, and sane. The terror is there, the agonized pain of his body telling him where every little thing hurts, but he feels it. He’s here inside it, doing things with it, and no one’s telling him how. No one’s helping him do this. He’s functioning, and he’s doing it all by himself.</p><p>It’s a triumphant euphoria as reckless and overjoyed as a bird freed from a cage. Like the bird he’s flying in an open sky where there are predators, and dangers that want to hurt him, but he’s released. And to some senseless part of him, that’s all that matters. The invigorated, soaring joy of it.</p><p>Of having his mind.</p><p>Behind him he catches the baying chorus of a dog pack. Hounds. They’re tracking his scent then. He’s hunted, and the sound of those dogs means they’re going to find him. Unless he gets rid of it.</p><p>One side of that thought is blind terror. The fear of any hunted animal, pushed too hard and running too far, but unable to escape the net. On the other side is another wave of dizzy wonder. Because he just did that! He just had a thought. He just identified an issue, and now he’s thinking of solutions. The cogs of his brain are attuned and orderly, and it feels so good he can only be half afraid at the moment.</p><p>But that still won’t help him if he’s caught again—another rational thought that elicits the same spliced response. They’ll ruin it again. Ruin him again. Take everything he has and leave him with nothing. If he’s caught, it’s back to their control, where they’ll rape and pillage the last fragile thoughts he has.</p><p>But as the snarls and barks of the dogs get closer, that possibility grows and grows in his mind, until its all he can think about and he’s choking on it. He can barely see, and every breath he draws come out as an agonized sob, lacerated by a terror that is equally horrifying and inescapable. They’re going to catch him. With the dogs on his tail, there’s no way to shake the hunt, and now he’s almost in their clutches.</p><p>His desperate mind cycles through solutions with blinding rapidity. He could climb a tree, crawl under some bushes, look for a hole to hide in, grab a branch and try to fight them off. Each and every one is utterly useless. Until he stumbles, and trips forward into a waist deep pool of swamp slime that appears unexpectedly beneath his next step.</p><p>And thinks Water.</p><p>He nearly chokes on his relief, but doesn’t have time even for that before he’s plunging deeper into the bog as fast as he can. Stumbling through mud, just barely keeping the books undamaged, he staggers forward without hesitation. There’s time. Just enough time. Just enough. He pushes forward until the slurp and squelch of fetid soggy water and mud is all he can think about.</p><p>Tossing his books underneath a dry patch of rich green plants with wide rubbery leaves, he ducks all the way down into the sludge. It comes up to his shoulders, frigid with cold and damp, utterly ruining his clothes. But being wet and filthy is the last of his worries. Instead he rakes his fingers through the muddy banks of the little island next to him, scooping up handfuls of soggy earth. Haphazardly he slaps it down on the top of his head and continues to slop handfuls of mud on himself until his skin is absolutely covered. Then he ducks down. Kneeling in brackish water and tilting his chin up he’s almost completely submerged, with only his nose, eyes, and forehead still in open air.</p><p>And then he waits.</p><p>Dog barks fill the blackness around him, unseen in the dark but dangerously close by the sound of them. Through it all he crouches, hardly daring to breathe until the hunting parties move on, probably expanding their search as the scent disappears. Even then, it’s only after hours of tense unbroken stillness and the first gray streaks of dawn, that he dares to move. Weary and chilled to the bone, he crawls out of the still pond that has been his shelter this whole time and collapses next to his books in the thick growth of waxy leaves.</p><p>He’s so tired that its gone beyond exhausted into the unwelcome clarity of being horribly wakeful. After all the hours of trying to pierce the darkness his eyes are sore and watery, radiating a low grade headache through his temples. Everything aches really. His feet are the worst, and without bothering to sit up he lifts one leg to drag his slipper off and assess the damage. The movement pulls uncomfortably where his knees are skinned and raw, making him wince but ignore it.</p><p>When he pulls off his shoes, both his feet are bloody where they’ve been chafed, the skin ripped and tender. They’ll need attention, and probably sooner rather than later, but in the middle of a muddy swamp there’s no water clean enough for it. He’s in the middle of gingerly slipping his shoes back on, trying to do it carefully with the tips of his fingers, when he hears a sound he’s been subconsciously dreading this whole time. The sound of voices.</p><p>They’re a little separated from him, the speakers hidden by lush vegetation, but he stiffens anyway. Turning over onto his stomach, he keeps perfectly still in the undergrowth. After several seconds of tense waiting, he sees one of them out of the corner of his eye, a few yards away. A girl.</p><p>A young girl.</p><p>It’s only children. Three of them, two girls and a boy that look like a brother and sisters. The youngest can’t be older than ten, and the boy is a slender lad about Bren’s own age. He’s probably sixteen, or slightly older, with a thatch of messy dark hair and sober black eyes. Both the lad and the oldest sister are lugging heavy bundles of fresh reeds, the boy has a sturdy walking staff, and the youngest is tripping along behind them with a burlap sack slung over her shoulder.</p><p>A few yards away the boy tosses his bundle to the ground, and starts wading off into a thick patch of reeds and cattails, where he begins selecting and cutting some of the tall stalks. His sister follows suit, and the youngest child settles down in the grass and begins braiding a wreath out of swamp grass while the others work. They’re laughing and chattering obliviously, and Bren relaxes a little as he watches them.</p><p>They’re not dangerous. Just children. Probably doing some routine work, harvesting plants. Neither threatening, or important.</p><p>But still, he watches carefully. Especially the youngest child. She’s obviously carrying something important in the sack, and because neither of her siblings came to her for tools, he can probably guess what she has. It’s the most likely solution, since they’re out here alone, and it looks like they’re staying for a while, working at a leisurely pace. They must have brought some sort of picnic lunch, and given it to the littlest to take care of, so the ones working don’t have to. It makes sense.</p><p>And he’s hungry.</p><p>When he surges to his feet, he does it suddenly, and pounces on the girl before anyone but him has time to move. She screams as he grabs her, high pitched and frightened. Both the older children whirl round, the boy lunges for his staff lying in the grass, and Bren drags the little girl close to his side where he can get an arm around her neck in a threatening chokehold. When the boy straightens with his stick brandished it’s already too late though, the little girl is trembling with fright and sobbing, but obviously pinned where her brother can’t reach her.</p><p>“Get behind me, Ana.” the boy shouts at the sister next to him, and she steps obediently so that he’s between her and Bren.</p><p>“Tamas—“ the little girl sobs, squirming in Bren’s grip.</p><p>“Stay still.” Her brother cautions, dark brows knitted with anxiety, eyes darting back and forth from his sister’s face to the man holding her pinioned.</p><p>For a long moment there’s a tense stalemate, everyone hovering frozen.</p><p>“<em>Nicht bewegen</em>.” Bren calls sternly, even though nobody is.</p><p>Carefully, trying not to compromise his grip or take his eyes off the threatening young man, Bren fumbles to reach the sack hanging off his hostage’s shoulder. When she feels his hand the little girl sobs again, flinching. “<em>Ich werde dich nicht verletzen, liebchen</em>.” He murmurs as gently as he can, trying to reassure her, though it doesn’t appear to make much of a difference.</p><p>Once he feels the sack securely in his grip, he moves again. Ripping the bag off her shoulder, he shoves the little girl away roughly. She darts across the grass to her brother, ducking under his staff to throw her arms around his waist, regardless of the tense stance he’s in. The children watch guardedly as Bren yanks the sack open and unceremoniously dumps it on the grass, going on his knees to sort through its contents.</p><p>Cheese: perishable but good for now. Bread: it’ll get stale, but he can save it. Butter: useless. He tosses the soft lump away, and it lands somewhere in the grass with a thump, forgotten. And finally, three carrots: very good, longer lasting. Those he’ll save.</p><p>It’s enough to keep him going if he rations it, and his appetite isn’t demanding anyway. Still, better to fuel himself when he has the chance. He tucks a hunk of the cheese into his mouth, more out of practicality than from any desire to eat it, and he chews as he tosses rations back into the sack. When he stands up Tamas is suddenly in front of him, holding out a waterskin.</p><p>“Here.”</p><p>Bren looks down at it startled, then back to Tamas. The lad flushes under the look, going red and awkward as his eyes fall, and he shuffles on his feet. “Ye should take it,” the boy stammers, not meeting Bren’s gaze. “Swamp’s brackish...you won’t find anythin’ fit te drink for miles...”</p><p>Silently Bren takes the waterskin, cheeks bulging with the food he’s forgotten to chew, still just looking at the lad’s face. Tamas clears his throat awkwardly and tugs on the bottom of his tunic even though there’s nothing wrong with it. Then the boy bobs his head and steps away, which breaks the moment. Bren blinks back to life, equally uncomfortable now that his threatening persona has vanished, and he can’t think of anything to say, so he says nothing as he turns to leave.</p><p>The three children mutely watch his filthy form limp off. None of them speak as he goes, or try to say goodby to him. They just stare in weird silence as he slinks back into the brush, until the skeletal figure has vanished.</p><p>“Idiot.” Ana says, unexpectedly giving her brother a shove.</p><p>“Wot was that for?” He demands, rubbing his shoulder.</p><p>“Why’d you give him our only waterskin?” The girl shoots back, rolling her eyes. “Mam’s gonna kill ye for that!”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Starvation</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Trigger Warning! For: Vomiting, Body Dysphoria, Discussions of Memory Loss, Paranoia, Implied Rape and Similar Themes (nothing explicit, but still. It’s implied), Self Harm, Suicidal Ideation, Discussions of Self-Hatred, Implied/Referenced Starvation, Referenced Invasion of Privacy and Forced Nudity.</p><p>Your mental health is not a joke, even if you’ve somehow made it this far, please pay attention to these content warnings if you feel any personal concern about them.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The last time he washes himself with the intention of looking clean is in a rain barrel behind a farmhouse.</p><p>He thrusts both his arms into water up to the shoulder, and hurriedly begins to scrub. Only a clothesline of drying laundry protects him from view, and he tries to wash as quickly as possible. Dried swamp filth is crusted over every inch of him, and he begins rinsing it away, while looking out for unfriendly observers at the same time. Until he looks down.</p><p>And doesn’t recognize his hands.</p><p>He freezes, staring at his arms in shock, too shaken to even make a sound. Its the first time he’s actually looked at and noticed them, and his stomach turns with an uncomfortable icy feeling at the sight. They’re...</p><p>They’re horrible.</p><p>Old. The hands look old. Thin and bony, with knobby joints and hardly any flesh. The veins along the backs of the hands and forearms stand out behind dry papery skin. They look twisted and weary, like old, thirsty tree branches.</p><p>But they’re his. They have to be his. He knows every one of those neatly arranged scars on the inner arms more familiarly than all his freckles. They’re <em>his</em> scars, and he remembers getting them. Knows the date, knows the time, knows which robes Trent was wearing. At the moment there are things about those scars that he remembers more vividly than he remembers all the things about himself, but they’re...</p><p>They’re on someone else’s arms. When he directs the hands in front of him to open and close, the fingers curl and uncurl just like he’s telling them to. But they don’t look like him. They’re not what he remembers.</p><p>They aren’t young.</p><p>He knows what he’s going to see before he even leans forward to look. It still doesn’t really prepare him. His stomach twists like there’s a knife through his gut, and he has to look away after only one glance. Tottering backwards he collapses, falling into a sitting position by the rain barrel and drawing his knees up until he’s curled in a fetal position behind them. A sob fights him for release until it wins, and the sound rips out of him as if it’s taking his ribcage with it.</p><p>How long?</p><p>The truth should have been obvious. He can feel the change. Now that he’s looking for it, little signs are everywhere. He can feel the facial hair he shouldn’t have, and he has to squint to see things that used to be more easily visible. His hair is long and unkempt, brushing his cheeks in a way it never used to. The round youthful flesh of his arms is gone, until rough leathery skin and sharp bones are all that’s left.</p><p>How much did he loose?</p><p>He strangles around another sob trying to overcome him like the last one. A wave of nausea lurches through his stomach and he covers his mouth just in time to force it down, huddling around the panicky flutter as if he can bottle it up. Then he catches a glimpse of his arm out of the corner of his eye, revulsion twists his gut, and he scrambles forward just in time to fall on hands and knees and empty his stomach.</p><p>Still trying not to gag and lurching in a blind panic, he staggers to his feet again. Away from the vomit, and away from his reflection. He can’t <em>look</em> at himself without feeling sick, and he anxiously pulls his arms back inside his muddy asylum’s uniform, like a turtle retreating into its shell. The attempt doesn’t really help, and he seizes on a drying shirt as it catches his eye, fluttering on the clothesline. It’s wet still, but there’s long sleeves, and he grabs it without thinking. He takes a pair of trousers for good measure, and then he’s stumbling away towards empty fields again.</p><p>He avoids puddles after the farmhouse, and doesn’t look at his reflection anymore. There are many reasons to avoid Bren in the mirror. The man looking back at him is a murderer, a guilty killer soaked in the blood of his sins.</p><p>He’s also a stranger. There are two reasons that scares him, and he runs from himself like his own personal ghost. First and foremost, his face doesn’t belong to him, and it makes him cringe away when he’s forced to look. It’s a history more accurate than his own memory is: a faithful clock that’s kept on ticking without him, and he <em>hates it</em>. The diary of his body is a record of every one of his failures, every one of his fractures, every single puzzle piece he’s lost, and how <em>long </em>he lost it.</p><p>That empty gap is terrifying and irresistible in one unholy chalice, and he broods over it late at night, when he’s sleepless in the dark. What did he loose? How much did he see, or hear, or say, that he’ll never know he did? An unfortunate side effect of Trent’s forbidden teachings, and a vivid imagination, makes those possibilities all too easy to contemplate. And he knows humanity, what happens to those that can’t fight back. He knows he was injured, after all. They could strike and bruise him because they knew he wouldn’t remember it even minutes later, and he can’t help but ask: were they ultimately right? Because...what if he <em>doesn’t</em> remember all of it? All the ways he’s been coerced, and used without his knowledge for whatever desires someone might have. All it takes is one person. And he wouldn’t know. He might walk past an abuser in the street, and not even remember them.</p><p>The other reason is less innocent.</p><p>It’s a selfish qualm that disgusts him about himself. Because the other reason he runs from his appearance is <em>Pride</em><em>.</em> Bren in the mirror is a broken wreck, caked in filth. He’s repulsive. Covered in shit and reeking of garbage, displayed like a masterpiece of everything ugly, and it’s demeaning. The insolent ghost of a power hungry Bren knows what it is to be clean. To be groomed, charismatic, and <em>desirable.</em> He remembers being better than this, a collection of handsome features and charming words, when he used to confidently fit in his skin, and know he was dangerous. Some cruel, persistent echo condemns what he is, judging every stain and flaw more harshly than any outsider ever could. Because some arrogant corner of him hates what he looks like, and wants to be beautiful again.</p><p>Like his manipulative bullshit every amounted to anything more than lies in the first place.</p><p>&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;</p><p>Everything is a blur after that. It all melts together. Not indistinctly, but unchangingly. He recalls the exact time of every meal he eats and the name of every squalid village he wanders through, with all the crystal clarity of an eidetic memory, but there’s nothing special about the numbers.</p><p>Both record the occurrence of infrequent events.</p><p>Nothing gives either circumstance any interest, and that’s where the monochrome starts to bleed and color everything. All the settlements are poor and ramshackle, built of flimsy wood and inhabited by miserable faces. He walks straight through them without stopping because they only have one road. And the meals are only meager scraps and bits of trash he picks out of the gutter and steals from people’s tossed out rubbish. They aren’t exciting either.</p><p>In a word: he wanders. Not mentally, or in the possession of his faculties. But in the directing and maintenance of everything else, he drifts listlessly. He walks because it makes his skin itch to sit still, like a long sharp needle slowly sinking into the meat of his heels, until it’s splitting his bones and stabbing into the marrow. And then he lies down again because after ruthless hours of sleep deprivation he keeps stumbling, and can’t stay awake on his feet any longer. He eats because all the missed meals make him lightheaded and constantly half sick to the stomach. Then he starves because he never feels hungry, and he can’t be bothered with food.</p><p>Both the sleeping and the eating are oscillating extremes that he ignores until they’re physically overwhelming, and then obsesses over until he relapses into minimizing again. The need for rest is something he can put off, until he crashes face first and sleeps like the dead. And the need for food is something he can dismiss, until he binges and stuffs himself. Each famine serves the same purpose of moving, walking with no other object than to walk, and fight down the itch in his skin for as long as he can.</p><p>When he hits his first big city, the main road—which has been running like a connecting thread through all his numbers—disappears, and he stops moving with any direction at all. He starts to drift in twisting patterns instead of straight ones, following countless alleyways and backtracks instead of one clear road. Buildings crowd in his peripheral vision instead of open fields, people brush shoulders with him all day long, and he walks through it all as isolated as if he’s the only living person in the world. With countless maze-like streets, and no drive to go anywhere but somewhere he isn’t currently, he wanders everywhere but out.</p><p>It’s the perfect place to be lost, but never looked for, and he vanishes from existence completely. Not as a person, but as an individual. Nobody looks at him here. No matter where he goes he’s alone. Even surrounded by people he’s just a face in the crowd, another beggar picking through the mud, another drifter to circumvent or simply shove aside, and the anonymity dwarfs him. It lurks at his back wherever he goes, like a looming companion that walks behind him so he’s constantly in its shadow. The obscurity of being alone in a crowd.</p><p>He doesn’t understand the invisibility he’s developed however, until a bleak night behind a tavern.</p><p>Its a late hour shrouded by a thick comforter of dirty smog that blankets everything and obscures distant objects. The thick humidity is enough to give everything a coating of clammy dew, but unlike rain it’s not enough to truly wash anything, and the result is an oppressive filthy slime that clings to every surface. He huddles in the side of a narrow alley, shivering in a fitful doze. Its not cold enough to force him under shelter, but not warm enough to heat his icy skin, so he slumbers in a halfway limbo of numbed chilly fingers without bothering to find relief.</p><p>His dreams are punctuated by muted impressions of the real world, and he performs any of half a dozen completely commonplace actions in his sleep, without actually doing any of them. Like dragging himself to his feet so he can relieve his overfilled bladder against the wall, or tugging his coat closed in a way that sufficiently covers and comforts all of him at once. He repeats the same trite, meaningless tasks over and over. In the dream they’re easy, until he blinks awake to the disappointment of realizing he hasn’t actually done any of the things he <em>thinks</em> he’s been doing. And now they’re much harder to do awake than they were when he was asleep, and he reluctantly thinks about acting on his dreams this time until he falls asleep again, and dreams again, and wakes to find he’s fallen into the same trap. Yet again.</p><p>In the middle of this exhaustion driven loop, someone trips over him. A sharp jostle shocks him completely awake, and he snaps back into himself with a grunt, and a moment of dizzy confusion as he tries to make sense of what’s happened. The man is still half draped over him, swearing profusely, and Bren can smell the heavy alcohol on his breath without even trying. It’s all he has time to recognize before the stranger hauls him roughly to his feet, and slams his back against the alley wall so hard it takes the breath out of him.</p><p>“Wot’s your problem, mate?” The figure demands in a drunken rage.</p><p>Confusion is still fogging his brain, and without any air in his lungs it’s difficult to find an answer, so he can only hang limp in the other man’s grip. Another shove against the wall, doesn’t help.</p><p>“Aw, come’on man,” another voice breaks in. “Leave him alone, it ain’t like he’s important.”</p><p>Reality finally clicks into place, as Bren grapples his surroundings again, and starts making sense of what’s going on. There’s another stranger, crouching a few feet away. Both men look like a disreputable pair, with big dirty hands, thick boots, and rough patched clothes. The one in front of him has crooked rotten teeth, and the man at the end of the alley is chewing on the stubby end of a nearly burnt out cigar. As well as a third distressingly small figure squirming underneath him, and what sounds like muffled sobs coming from that direction.</p><p>“The fuck you lookin’ at?” His interrogator demands about the same time that his eyes catch the presence of that third figure, and another shove breaks his sightline as he wheezes for breath again.</p><p>“He’s just some fuckin’ tramp, mate, jesus!” The cigar chewer says exasperated. “Fuckin’ forget about him.”</p><p>“Shut the ‘ell up.”</p><p>“I’m just sayin.’ Bring him in too, if that’s where ya jollies are...he seems pretty fuckin’ filthy to me...But I ain’t gonna wait all goddamn day for ya.”</p><p>“You didn’t see shit, bitch.” The stranger growls, giving Bren another shove.</p><p>“Nien—“ Bren stammers, vigorously shaking his head for good measure.</p><p>“No. That’s fuckin’ right you didn’t.” The man snarls, rotten teeth flashing, and another stagnant wave of his drunken breath rolls over Bren’s face like a clammy vapor. “Now get the hell outa here.”</p><p>He throws Bren so suddenly, that it catches him off guard and makes him stumble to his hands and knees. When he doesn’t get back up fast enough the stranger makes a threatening feint at him, and he cringes away, scrambling to pick himself up. Ducking his head down, he retreats as quickly as he can, carefully not looking at anything as he leaves.</p><p>“Just keep fuckin’ walkin’ dibshit...” the drunken stranger calls after him. </p><p>Bren doesn’t answer, just hunches his shoulders against the voice, and stumbles away. All that matters is not being where those men are, and he soldiers on and on to achieve the distance, hugging his stomach as he walks. He keeps going with no real sense of direction except the desire to get away, and the streets morph under his feet into new stones and buildings, as he wanders rapidly from corner to corner.</p><p>It doesn’t stop him from being there all night long.</p><p>That third helpless figure is the only thing he can picture. It’s always just out of his eye-line no matter where he looks, always where he can’t see it directly. It follows him stubbornly, crawling across his skin like caress of phantom hands, and he drives himself hard till morning to escape it, without success. By the time dark changes to the dirty brown of a coming morning, every bone in his body hurts, and he’s opened a sore into the back of his hand from scratching at the place with incessant nervous energy.</p><p>But the phantom still remains, and as the morning street fills with people, it fills with faces that mirror his memory perfectly until he looks at them directly. And then the face is just a face, and the resemblance is no resemblance at all. He limps and stumbles between them, unable to meet anyone in the eye, but equally unable to stop looking at everyone. The phantoms are still behind him, in front of him, directly on either side, and it makes him skittish. Even brushing shoulders makes him flinch away from strangers, dodging through the crowds like an errant leaf on invisible winds. </p><p>The people don’t even looks askance at him.</p><p>That’s the problem with being nobody. There’s no one to ground him, no anchor to give him weight. Its all too easy, when you don’t matter, to never draw a sideways look, or a grain of concern from anyone. Nobody cares who you are, or what you do, when you have no identity at all. So nobody saves you either.</p><p>&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;</p><p>The days get shorter as the nights get longer, and the cold comes on. It slips under jackets and creeps up trouser legs to caress at exposed skin, working its fingers under every open cuff and collar, nipping at unprotected noses and ears. The winter moves like a stalking predator through the streets, whirling around corners and slithering between people’s legs. A constant draft flows along the ground, catching up bits of dry dust and paper in swirling eddies that skitter restlessly across frigid roads, and drift into stagnant corners.</p><p>Huddling against the wind, hunched up behind his knees, Bren sits. He can’t find anywhere warm enough to stop shivering. So he’s given up here, taking meager shelter in an alley between two buildings, where he’s out of the wind. That endless winter draft still ghosts across his feet, but it’s not as forceful. Passing pedestrians cast weaving shadows across the paving stones, intermittently breaking the light. And nobody notices him.</p><p>So he sits, hugging his knees to his chest, and he shivers.</p><p>Gently, insubstantial as breath, a snowflake lands on his arm. He looks at it, sitting there like a delicate flower until another one lands beside it. Others are coming, but he’s tired...so bone deep tired...and he leans forward to prop his forehead on his arms, crushing the flakes under his head. Around him the snow continues to fall in thick heavy puffs which quickly powder the ground, and begin to form drifts. The cold wraps around his bones as the frosted blanket thickens over him, covering him indiscriminately as everything else, until his hair is limp with melted snow and he can feel it soaking through his coat.</p><p>That’s good, he thinks hollowly. It’s cold enough. By the end of the night, perhaps sooner...</p><p>Good. He doesn’t care much, but sooner seems less unpleasant, if he had to choose. He’ll wait as long as it takes, either way...</p><p>Except for a smell. It’s all the more noticeable for being so at odds with the cold. A warm, nutty smell. Fresh bread. Somewhere a baker must have just pulled their latest batch out of the oven, and the smell of it puffs against him as the icy wind rolls over him.</p><p>Smelling fresh bread brings broken things to the surface.</p><p>When he was seven: Mother scattering flour across his hands so the dough doesn’t stick as he kneads for her. Thirteen years old, studying the firebolt cantrip at the kitchen table as he hears her pulling loaves from the oven behind him. Sixteen and he’s huddling in the corner of the barracks, arms throbbing through blood soaked bandages after his third session, wolfing down a stolen dinner roll that Astrid smuggled to him. He’s seventeen, and kneading the bread again, but this time he doesn’t smile when his mother dusts the flour. Seventeen, and he eats but doesn’t taste it. Sometime-Age and he’s being hand fed bites of stale biscuit by a faceless nurse, who pinches him when he forgets to chew. Now-Age, and he’s crouching under the dripping leaves of a hedgerow, gnawing down a hunk of moldy bread.</p><p>And then he’s five again, watching over the edge of the table as his mother works. “Life is like sourdough, <em>schatz</em>.” She says briskly, punching down the dough as she talks. “It won’t rise without a little of that sour leaven to make it grow.”</p><p>He lifts his head from his knees, and it sends a load of snow tumbling down his back. Quietly he holds one arm out, splaying his fingers in the air before him, and he looks at it clinically. It’s hardly more than bones, sallow skin, and malnourished muscles, shriveled and starved in front of him. The nails are all chewed down, and the sore on the back of his hand is still scabbed over and fresh from his continual nitpicking. Ugly, he thinks first.</p><p>Yours. He thinks second.</p><p>It’s his. The hand is his, and the arm is his, and that irritated scab is his too. All the rotten memories, and all the sins, and all the fucking mistakes are his. Looking at that hand, he fights down the urge to scratch his face with it. To tear until his jaw is ripped and bloody with it, appropriately marked and punished. He doesn’t rip...But he can punish.</p><p>What the fuck is this? He snarls at himself. What the fuck do you think you’re doing?</p><p>Shaking the snow off, he drags himself to his feet, and starts walking. He moves toward the bakery, because the bread is fresh, and he knows he needs to eat. Bodies die when you don’t eat. And he is trying not to die.</p><p>It’s your fault, his feet tell him as he walks.</p><p>You did this, his hands agree as he counts his meager coins.</p><p>This is your fucking fault, his mouth snarls with every ravenous bite he wolfs down, heedless of anything else.</p><p>This is your mistake, and your mess, and you need to fix it. Your parents are dead because you murdered them. They’re dead because you betrayed them, and chose fucking Trent instead of them. You did this. You crawled and danced attendance for this. Because you were such a beggar, groveling like a good little slut for power.</p><p>You’re a monster, Bren Ermendrud.</p><p>And you don’t fucking <em>deserve</em> to die.</p><p>It’s the cruelest, most harrowing winter he barely crawls out on the other side of. Bitten by harsh winds, and assaulted by relentless cold. He limps through it, driven before the slave-masters of Cold and Starvation from one insufficient shelter to another. Hiding himself from the wind, he crawls into obscure corners to keep himself warm, because he deserves to survive the night. He drives himself like a draft horse and painstakingly labors for every scrap of food and every meager coin that he can find to fill his belly, because he can’t sink as low as starvation. Dredging through the rank and stinking streets he steals an unmatched leather glove that doesn’t even fit and he has to cut off the fingers before it will work, but when it’s adjusted, he yanks it on over his injured hand with the sore on it, because maltreating his skin is a habit he needs to break.</p><p>He struggles through it all and endures the agony, because he deserves every bloody, gasping, tortured second of this. The other door is an escapist fantasy he’s indulged. But that was stupid. That was <em>selfish</em>. The world is a shit-stained hellhole, and he deserves to live and breathe in it. He has a sin to wipe out, and he has to keep limping forward until he finishes it, or it finishes him. That’s what he deserves.</p><p>Comfortless, militant survival.</p><p>The hatred doesn’t always hound him so relentlessly. It ebbs and flows. And the putrid stagnation rises and falls too, drowning his reality under polluted floodwater, while he floats in emptiness for days. But hatred is always there, a constant smoldering core of molten loathing that sears his skin no matter where he goes. A relentless scourge of hypercritical, caustic narration, commenting on <em>everything</em> he does with virulent contempt.</p><p>It’s a shadow self that clings to him like a leech, bleeding him dry. It apes every move he makes like a sarcastic puppet, mirroring his actions in twisted pantomime, showing him all the blunders and errors in a reversed caricature. The shadows self hates him, and distorted by its mocking he venomously hates himself. Under the shadow self he runs ragged, but the moment he stops to rest accusations denounce him as lazy and selfish, forcing him up again. So he limps on, sore and bleeding under the pace, marching to the punishing rhythm of his own never satisfied drum.</p><p>You’re a murderer Bren Ermendrud, the shadow self tells him: you don’t get the privilege of killing yourself.</p><p>&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;</p><p>It was a bitterly cold day, when he tried again.</p><p>A driving wind sweeps the streets clear of people as he walks, hunching his shoulders against the freezing blast at his back. Tossed before the wind, the snow bites at solid objects like horizontal knives of ice, persistently swirling up his trouser legs and down the back of his collar. He’s limping through a shadow world of bleached white, peopled by half seen phantom shapes hurrying through the snow. The edge of ice and desperation sharpens everything, so that when his path intersects with another traveler’s they hurry past each other without speaking. He doesn’t look at them, and they don’t look at him, both rushing by with heads bowed against the wind, intent on reaching their destination. The winter wind is scorching, and fierce, and hungry like a predator.</p><p>But he has to try again, and can’t postpone it for anything.</p><p>Clutched like a talisman to his chest, hugged inside his coat, is the package. The components. The mission. It’s a weight, a burden he’s clinging to, and he clutches it close until his knuckles are white from the strength of his grip. The solid mass presses comfortingly into his sternum, and he carefully hoards it with every step.</p><p>Turning quickly, he ducks into a narrow side street between two buildings. The wind is less piercing here, but escaping the wind is not his objective. He’s looking for a wooden shutter, halfway down the alley, mounted roughly on the wall to his left. He stops in front of it, and digs his hands under the edge, pulling the shutter away from the wall. On the inside is a frayed knot of rope that used to hold it closed but is now snapped, allowing him to open the shutter just enough to slip underneath it, and worm his way through the unframed window it covers.</p><p>On the other side of the window is darkness, and the dusty smell of dried grass, that he crawls into. It’s only the narrowest of gaps between the masonry behind him and a solid wall of hay bales at his front, but being as scrawny as he is, when flattened between them he can just fit. He shuffles to the side, scooting his back along the wall, until he finds a corner. Then he turns it and scoots along another wall until finds the edge of the hay stack, and pries himself free. Then the barn opens up for his eyes, dim and full of rafters, stretching out into the distance. He himself is standing on a raised stone platform at the edge of a large dirt pen sunk into the floor, where several cows have raised their heads to stare up at him, mildly chewing their cud.</p><p>Watched by the cows, he climbs over the wooden fence at the edge of the pen, which drops him into their wooden hay trough, cluttered with of uneaten scraps of dried grass. There’s a gentle wooden ramp that is the proper entrance to the cow pen, but he doesn’t want to get into the pen itself. By walking along the hay trough, there’s a point where it connects with the wooden ramp as it goes down, and here he finds a narrow gap in the boards. It’s just wide enough to let him slip through, and he ducks into the cramped narrow space hidden underneath the ramp.</p><p>His hiding place is barely tall enough for him to sit straight, but the dust is undisturbed, and except for that one narrow entrance there’s no way to see into or out of his shelter. It’s safe, and it’s hidden, and nobody knows it’s here except him. That insulation and solitude is priceless. The comfort of absolute privacy is a luxury he hasn’t been able to afford in a long, long time.</p><p>He hardly remembers it, but he knows there were always people watching him at the sanatorium. There was always someone coming to look for him, or people talking about him, hands touching his body without asking. Pinching, and pushing, and never leaving him alone. He wasn’t their patient really. He was there to be a prisoner, and the invasion of his space came with that.</p><p>Before, wasn’t any better. Ikithon didn’t like any secrets but his own, and certainly wouldn’t tolerate his students having any. Their room had no door to open or close, and they all shared one barrack anyway, so they had no place to be alone. There was always someone else there, something awkward you accidentally saw or showed, things that felt tender and private that you were forced to discuss in public.</p><p>It lead to nothing feeling sacred, and many blurred boundaries between the three of them. Touches that didn’t feel very platonic, and words that felt like anything but romance, tangling hopelessly together in one misshapen ball. Until there was nothing you weren’t willing to strip bare, or say in front of someone else, because everyone had seen or heard it already.</p><p>And it wasn’t like there was any guarantee with Trent either. Their teacher might come unexpectedly at any hour of the day or night, even interrupting sex with all the clinical indifference of a man who’d coached them through such indignities already. There were no boundaries because they all belonged to him, like finely crafted machines he repaired and corrected regularly. Which meant maintaining a standard of rigorous cleanliness at all times, because you never knew when you’d have to stand at attention naked.</p><p>With that in his memories, privacy is a priceless luxury. The one good thing this choking, shit covered life rewards him with. Merciful anonymity that shields his movements from scrutiny, and makes him forgettable. With his dirt and his scruff he drops through the cracks, and melts back into the walls, blessedly unimportant. It’s <em>heavenly</em>. Even though he shouldn’t enjoy it, he spoils himself with this one comfort, hoarding up his priceless stock of invisibility like a drug he’s hooked on.</p><p>And this cramped, awkward hiding place is the central point holding the edges of that safety together. Here, carefully concealed in the corners, are the few stray oddments he’s managed to collect. His worldly possessions are hardly enough to carry in both arms, but they’re like clumsy stitches, and he haphazardly concocts a history out of them. Together his humble treasures, and his four wooden walls represent the tattered scraps of a life he’s built for himself, and he hoards this cubby hole viciously.</p><p>Especially one bundle, carefully wrapped up in a frayed scrap of canvas, tucked back into the farthest corner. It’s hidden underneath straw, but he pulls it out carefully, and unfolds the wrappings, exposing their contents to the air. His books. A shaking exhale punches out of him at the sight of them, shivering on his knees. With ginger reverence he runs his fingers across the ragged bindings, scruffed and weathered from haphazard travel. Every texture sparks with familiarity beneath his fingers, and it makes him shudder. Biting his lip, he curls his fingers under the edge of his spellbook’s outer binding, hardly daring to look at what he’s doing.</p><p>It’s been far too long...and not long enough.</p><p>Opening to the first page floods his stomach with a flash of hot ice, bowing him under the weight. Something within him quakes at its very foundations, shaken by a terrible hunger that has nothing to do with food, and everything to do with the starved muscles of his intellect. He needs this. Needs the stimulation of it: the perfect, orderly, satisfaction of his knowledge. How could he ever walk away from this?</p><p>How can he still sink low enough to tolerate it?</p><p>Doesn’t matter. The spark is lit, the fuse is burning, and he’s opened the book to do anything but close it again. Rapidly, almost hastily, he clutches together his things and kicks his way back out through the hole he squeezed in by. The time is ticking down now, the sand is running through his mental hour glass, and Now still isn’t soon enough.</p><p>The cows raise their heads again, when he appears, chewing at him placidly. Bren doesn’t notice. He’s indifferent to them now. Awkwardly he climbs back over the barrier onto the hay floor. Hands shaking, chewing on his lower lip, he sweeps the hay back until he has an open circle to work in. Tossing the package of incense down, he flings himself to the floor beside it, dragging his feet in to sit cross legged. And there he hunches over his book again, like a greedy child hoarding food, and leafs to the correct page. He digs his hand into the bag of incense, bringing out a fistful of dried leaves, that he holds over the cauldron. Then he calls.</p><p>The fire comes to his hand like an obedient pet or a good natured dog, far too eager and friendly for the terrible thing it is. The spell vibrates along his whole arm, resonating to an inner harmony that is intensely familiar. To his body it feels good, warm, and right. A thrill of exotic power, and relief, washing over his frozen faculties like a balm. It puts every drop of his blood on edge, like the flame completes him.</p><p>But mentally, it’s a torture just to look at it. He inwardly cringes from it, repelled by his own hand, stomach rolling at the sight of the flames. It crawls under his skin like someone’s peeling it off, and every second he harbors the fire is an itching agony, silently screaming at him to banish it.</p><p>He’s so lost in the horrific fascination that the fistful of incense is completely devoured before he remembers to think, and when he blinks to himself all he’s holding is a handful of charred ashes. Completely useless for the spell. Shuddering he grabs a fresh handful, holds it out, chants and conjures again. And this time he begins in earnest.</p><p>The spell unfolds like a flower, a subtle blooming resonance. It swirls, and repeats, and circles on itself, tracing intricate patterns around an idea. The chanting is a rhythm, and the rhythm is a ritual that weaves magic out of nothing, consuming his incense between its threads. Within minutes it’s become a blur, a fascinating daze that completely enthralls him.</p><p>It’s been so long, too long since he’s done this. Done anything like this. Reached out to pluck that thread at all. Magic feels like a sin, an insult against sacred values, but here he is, conjuring it again. And it feels so good, he can hardly think, lost in an aching bitter pleasure. He missed this like a blind man remembering sight, or someone choking from lack of oxygen: with the primal deprivation of a soldier limping on an amputated limb. The magic is every part of him. And it’s forbidden, but he still needs it. Still craves it. Every word he speaks, every somatic gesture, feels like it’s rebuilding something with it. Like it’s stitching up a wound he didn’t even know was bleeding.</p><p>And it <em>hurts</em>. Like re-setting a broken bone, or yanking out a rotten tooth. It tortures him, and he gasps into it, like a man stumbling toward the edge of a cliff. The world blurs, and it’s with tears now, choking him as he talks. He can’t breathe, but somehow the spell is still there, and the gestures are still coming, and he’s clinging to it like a drowning man. Because without the anchor of every word, he’s going to crack and shatter apart somewhere dark and tender, where he’s very deeply wounded.</p><p>Then it just, closes.</p><p>The threads go taut, and something on the other side <em>yanks</em>. It flies out of his grip, unwinding like a spinning wheel is biting down and drawing out all his strings, flying into the hole in vomiting loops. Then something deep inside him snags, like a knot catching on his ribcage, and it goes tight as a noose synching around his middle. For a moment forces are careening against each other, neither outmatching the other, caught on the same irresistible bridge drawing them both.</p><p>Then the pressure overwhelms them, and their divide collapses together. For a moment their sparks meet in the absolute middle, touching across the divide of a tissue paper barrier. It lasts for the barest fraction of a second in which colors explode, and he’s suddenly experiencing everything, like he’s being dragged through another life at the speed of light. Then the gauze curtain rips in half, and the other side comes hurtling across. He’s retreating, and it’s advancing, so fast that he’s going to be sick if it lasts any longer.</p><p>And then just before it gets overwhelming, he’s thrown into himself again.</p><p>Except he’s not alone anymore. There’s two thoughts thinking him, instead of one. He’s hyperventilating with shock, giddy and overturned, but somehow he’s looking at himself at the same time, and he’s utterly calm about the whole experience. Floundering for air, he doubles over to clutch his stomach, anchoring himself with the press of cool stone against his forehead, trying to reconcile all the incongruities.</p><p>When he’s got his breathing under control he carefully lifts his head from the floor, still bent over but peeking outward like a animal testing the air, and looks at what he’s done. They’re on the same level like this, and golden eyes meet his with a lance of piercing intelligence, staring at him unblinkingly. It’s somehow a question he hears without asking.</p><p>His cat.</p><p>The re-creation is so exact, even his perfect memories can’t find a fault in the mirror in front of him. Knives drag through his lungs, sharply stung and somehow condemned by the picture in front of him. That this, of all things it could have chosen, is the image it’s assumed for him: a tender past that no one now living knows about...except himself. And now this fake Frumpkin.</p><p>It makes him feel...looked at. Seen in a way nothing has ever studied him.</p><p>With that newly born understanding he shivers, not sure he likes it. The exposed proximity reminds him, rather too forcibly, of other intrusive examinations. When confronted with eyes like the golden ones in front of him, its only too abundantly clear that the creature before him is as intelligent as he is, equally capable of sentient thought. Not coherent exactly...there are no actual words. But it’s there: the second thought, the other mind, hovering beside his own. All of the alien sensations are sharp reminders that this creature in front of him is a fey spirit.</p><p>And the fey are notoriously cunning.</p><p>“Ah...<em>hallo</em>...” straightening himself and resisting a nervous urge to dust the straw off his coat.</p><p>How is he supposed to communicate with it? Does it even understand Zemnian?</p><p>“Welcome. Foreign spirit. To the shores of the Material.” He falters, picking a onerous road over carefully pronounced Common syllables, just to be on the safe side.</p><p>The fey only looks at him, and the unvoiced questioning emotion nudges him again.</p><p>“Um...I have called you, from the home of the fey. As my familiar.” He struggles on, with a herculean effort to suppress the pointless filler words and stammers that slip into his speech when he’s nervous. “You will be, my uh...companion. And helper. When I call on you for aid you will...assist me. Um. In my journey.”</p><p>His mouth goes dry and empty, with nothing else to say in it. The uncomfortable shortcoming makes him look down, and knot his hands together, trying to convince himself that it’s ok to say nothing. Every empty second still rasps down his shoulders with alertness to the passing time, despite his effort not to feel like a failure.</p><p>The fey cat in front of him chirrups curiously, and pads across the stones on velveted cat feet. It curls to drag its shoulder across his knee, leaning hard into his leg as it moves, and he feels strangely reassured. Not just in himself, but from the other thought orbiting around his own, brushing against his companionably. His hand twitches, and for a moment he half reaches down to stroke. Then he looses his nerve, hand faltering in empty air and going still before actually making contact. The comforting thought bumps against him again, this time with a welcoming feel to it, and the cat stretches up to head-butt his shrinking fingers.</p><p>Something shivers inside him, frail and vulnerable, at the quivering center. He’s almost nervous with it, half afraid to let it have any footholds, because it’s so painfully tender. But the cat is still rubbing against his inert fingers and wrist, and with a damp, uncertain laugh, he turns his hand into the fawning. The cat starts to purr, planting a dainty paw on his leg in order to stretch upward, and press its head and shoulders up more fully into his hand.</p><p>A Greeting breaks through, fully formed and radiating along whatever strange perception exists between them. It crushes something fragile under its weight. His breath hitches wetly, hands starting to shake as they hover around the cat in his lap, and he chokes on whatever sensation the cat’s affection has just released. He doesn’t know what to do with it: this openness, this <em>knowledge</em> between them. It hurts. But the pain is like sensation rushing back into a cramped and deadened limb, so numbed and torpid he’d forgotten it existed, and the pain makes him ache with relief. And oh...</p><p><em>That’s</em> why they’re called Familiars...</p><p>Looking back on himself, summoning Frumpkin was the single best use of magic he’s ever made. It’s a relatively weak spell, and the spirit’s material form is cripplingly vulnerable. Trent always scoffed at summoning familiars, and called it Commoner’s Magic. But it’s not about how useful the cat is...or at least not fully.</p><p>The wizard’s cat is a prop. An irreplaceable comfort, that he can no longer function without. He clings to this tiny foothold with the desperation of his entire weight, hungry and starved for the companionship it gives him. The cat’s bulk, his fur, the sensory white noise of his purring is an inexpressible solace that numbs Caleb’s discomforts. With the cat on his shoulders he’s anchored by weight, when fear saws on his nerves the silk of Frumpkin’s fur offers relief, in oppressive conversations when eye contact is a physical pain he has the excuse of petting Frumpkin instead. The cat is a balm, a crutch, an escape. His many convoluted functions offer so much more than a pair of extra eyes and ears.</p><p>By this point Frumpkin’s presence feels more like an extension of himself than some alien being, a constant stream of the fey’s emotions and impressions, commenting on the world around them in a secondary tandem to Caleb’s own. Every minute of temporary death, robbed of the cat’s proximity to his mind, feels like being naked all down one side of his body. It’s upsetting, and earns a fierce enmity toward anyone who puts him through it.</p><p>So despite Frumpkin’s physical weakness, the limitations of his existence; what Trent would say, and how the world might scoff, Caleb brushes the objections aside and continues to summon Frumpkin. Even when he can barely afford to eat, let <em>alone</em> purchase ten gold’s worth of material components.</p><p>Of all his many sins, and many persistent guilts, he never questions this spell.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>For those of you that can remember one throwaway sentence from this chapter, the “needle pushing into the heel of your foot” thing, is an intrusive thought I have all the damn time, and it’s <em>SUPER FUCKING ANNOYING</em>. </p><p>At least I got a good metaphor out of it?</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Assimilate</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Trigger Warning! For: PTSD Flashbacks and Triggers, Referenced Self Harm, Self Loathing, Interpersonal Conflict, Referenced Abuse, and Implied Non-Con.</p><p>As always stay safe! These themes are less emphasized than previous chapters, but they are still very much present. Be aware of yourself.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Falling into company with Nott didn’t always feel like a blessing. It’s a balm and a gift that he clings to now, endlessly grateful for her presence. Deeper than friendship, and better than kindred spirits. More like an unshakable sister, than a loyal companion: a family unit knitted out of steal threads and common suffering, marked by the drops of shared bleeding between them.</p><p>But the first escape was like running desperately, chased off his legs, and he didn’t notice her in the pitch of it.</p><p>He’s fleeing mindlessly, desperately, as he always runs. The warmth of fire still thrums up his fingers, like a reminder. A collision. Sent careening into the face of the memories he buries, he stumbles on exhausted legs to escape them.</p><p>Get away. Get away. Get away.</p><p>Though his wrists are freed from the shackles now, he doesn’t feel free. Though his cat is perched precariously on his shoulders, he still can’t settle down. Though the jailhouse is no longer in sight behind him, it’s still not far enough. So he settles into a brutal but inexorable grind, too tired to run anymore, but relentlessly marching instead. Driven by unseen whips, he sinks into a grueling pace.</p><p>And he walks, and he walks, and he walks.</p><p>“Caleb.”</p><p>Fire crackles behind his eyes. The chains are a constant jingle, jingle, jingle. Eyes are always watching.</p><p>“Hey, Caleb.”</p><p>The bars are cold, and his back hurts, and the shackles rake into his wrists. He’s held down: cuffed, <em>dominated</em>; and under that constant reminder he exists in the cell, the sanatorium, Ikithon’s treatment room all at once. His guards are nurses, and his cell is a barrack, and every time he looks up it’s Trent Ikithon looking back at him. Smoke burns his lungs, flames wreathe his vision. And this time it’s him in the flames, chained up like a dog, with Them staring back at him. The roles reversed, the sin punished, their murderer burned at the stake. As he deserves, as he should be, but he never fully dies. Just stands there, with the sparks still hot under his finger tips, and looks, and looks, and looks.</p><p>At another building he’s lit on fire.</p><p>“Caleb!”</p><p>A shrill voice cuts jaggedly across the bonfire in his head, and something grabs his wrist. Trapping it, imprisoning it. The contact is <em>excruciating</em>: a lightning strike that rips up his spine and shocks his brain with white incandescent pain. He instinctively jerks away from it, his entire arm cringing away from the touch, flapping in the air with leftover discomfort, before he gathers the triggered hand to his chest like a wounded bird. The little goblin girl scrabbles back with a yelp at his vehement reaction, hugging herself in panic.</p><p>Shit. The goblin. He’d forgotten about her.</p><p>“Ah...” he stammers, frozen with nothing to say.</p><p>Her large ears droop in the silence, down-turning guiltily. “Sorry, Caleb...” she mutters, voice shrill and scratchy, kicking the dirt with her frayed shoe.</p><p>Right.</p><p>Caleb.</p><p>He’d said his name was Caleb. He hadn’t recognized it, when she called out to him. It’s just a throwaway spare, tossed out in hasty defense against her eyes—flashing with the iridescent shine of a cat—which was all he could see of her in the darkness. Only the goblin girl didn’t leave him alone after the first prying questions.</p><p>The name is real: an unfortunate boy in Blumenthal, who’d died of the smallpox when Bren was eleven years old. But it was the only thing he’d been able to remember in the moment, and he’d seized on it as meaningless. Every time she calls on him by the alias, the foreign title falls empty because it’s not really his name, and he fails to react to it immediately in consequence.</p><p>She’s still huddling sheepishly in front of him though. And he doesn’t want her to get suspicious or—gods forbid— start questioning all his odd behaviors. The aversion to touch, the mindless fleeing from civilization, how absentminded he is about his own supposed name. So he hastens to conjure words and distract her with them, spinning together the best of lie he can fabricate at the moment.</p><p>“<em>Ja, es ist</em> ok...” he awkwardly tries to reassure her, working hard to relax his shoulders enough to make it believable. “Just—ah...Just sensitive, you know? The cuffs kind of. Um. Injured my wrists a little bit...”</p><p>“Oh.” she says somehow managing to be just as unconvincing as he is, as she tries to shrug it off and nod carelessly.</p><p>“<em>Ja</em>...”</p><p>“Ok...”</p><p>For a moment they stand silent, neither quite knowing what to say or do next. The wizard’s inexorable walking pace has been cut short, but he can’t bring himself to give up on it either, caught between the desire to keep moving and the inability to do so with Nott there. He can’t quite bring himself to ignore her again, or move on without her.</p><p>“Well...I’m goin’ to bed...” Nott announces pointlessly, parking her butt on the ground.</p><p>The goblin girl curls up on her side like a cat, tugging at the threadbare edges of her cloak in a vain attempt to make the meager fabric cover all of her. Slowly Bren sinks down with her, sitting cross-legged on the ground, and carefully not looking at her as she arranges herself. Instead he knots his fingers together, staring at them in his lap. At last, she falls still, even though her feet still poke out from the edge of her cloak.</p><p>“G’night...Caleb...” she mumbles, stilted and embarrassed.</p><p>He ducks his head and doesn’t answer, picking at his bandages in the stillness, making a mental note to find some water. The injured wrists excuse had been a half truth, because his skin under the bandages really is chafed and bloody from the manacles, but it hadn’t been the reason he recoiled so strongly when she touched them. That had more to do with a long existing pitfall that he studiously avoids: when something restrains his wrists in any way and he’s immediately back in Trent’s chair, screaming himself hoarse.</p><p>The goblin girl doesn’t speak again, but if she’s asleep there’s no easy way to tell. She doesn’t snore or move at all, and through the following interminable silence, night falls. He sits with her until the darkness hides her from him. Then he sits alone, in the blackness with himself.</p><p>He’ll get up again soon. After another half hour. Just as soon as it seems reasonable to conclude that she’s really asleep, he’ll go. There’s no reason to stay, and the sooner he leaves the less entangled and tied down he is, so it’s the safest choice all things considered. Especially after the debacle at the jailhouse. That escapade is sure to find it’s way into the wrong ears, and the safest thing for his skin is to be far away, when it does. So he’ll go. Soon. Not quite yet, but soon.</p><p>A torturing minute drags by. Then another.</p><p>It was mostly Nott’s idea to escape together. He was too delirious with ruthless exposure to his most hated sensations and fears to have enough impetus to contradict her, or put up any kind of objections. So he went along with it, and the plan worked spectacularly, as far as escaping was concerned. It’s still too much. Fire is memorable. There will be questions, and inquiries, and people looking for clues. It’s only a matter of time before two and two end up together. Someone will look for bodies, or the belongings Nott had helped him steal back, and will realize what actually happened. He knows his teacher: the story will find him somehow.</p><p>Trent’s spies are everywhere.</p><p>An entire hour passes by, and he huddles through it, gnawing on that anxiety like a bone. Two hours, and he still doesn’t move.</p><p>He has to go. Especially without Nott. The goblin stands out. They’ll be looking for her: she’s memorable, unique. Being close to such an identifier will make him vulnerable, easier to find. She’ll be putting him at risk, because the more people know them, and the more people know them <em>together</em>—a goblin girl, and a human man—the more that exponent increases.</p><p>He sits by her all night, and lets her set their pace in the morning.</p><p>Because she gives impetus to him in more than just jailhouse escape plans. She neutralizes a force he hasn’t noticed or given name to in so long, that he hardly recognizes it for the thing it is. But the name is there, and he knows—if he tries—what her presence means. After five years of wandering, five years of starving and bleeding, he’s uniquely vulnerable to her draw. Five years of having no face is a slow grind he didn’t realize was crushing him, warping him out of shape. After five years of isolation he’s just a dry, famished shell, parched and withered by lack. Until someone is looking at him—there’s a second sound of footsteps when he listens for them—and he’s suddenly so starved of human connection even a goblin girl will do. </p><p>He’s lonely.</p><p>It’s that simple. He’s so lonely he can hardly breathe with it. And she helps, in the way that Frumpkin also helps. A soothing balm, that quiets his pains, and mutes his fears. She’s a pair of eyes looking at his face, a voice calling him something other than insults, a second presence he <em>knows </em>is there just by the pressure on his skin. Nott changes something, and he can’t give it up.</p><p>Even though he spends the first few days keeping himself up all night, first by rigid focus then by pricking his hands with a pin to ward off drowsiness when it’s too clamoring to ignore, coaching himself through all the actions of abandoning her. He’s still there in the morning. When he finally totters on his feet and crumples, too tired to think, too drained to function, he assumes she won’t be there when he wakes. Because who would stay through all the long, tedious hours that he slumbers like the dead? She has places to be, he’s sure. But she is there when he wakes. And he can’t look at her when he gets up, but he stops obsessing with abandoning her after that, and though they never acknowledge the bridge they’ve built...both of them know it’s there.</p><p>Because they’re two fragile, lonely people. And each needs the other’s footsteps.</p><p>&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;</p><p>Meeting the Mighty Nien is another blessing that didn’t feel very much like a good thing at the time. Especially not when they were getting arrested together. That seemed like the opposite of a good thing. A very, very bad thing, happening because of their antics specifically.</p><p>It was a good thing really. He knows that now. Has enough distance, enough...he doesn’t want to call it personal growth...but enough progression to know that these people are good for him. They make him remember, pay attention, and try harder to be real. Just like Nott’s presence makes him real. To them he’s not just a shit stain in the street, he’s a person, and they make him act like one. And that’s a good thing. Stimulation is a good thing.</p><p>Reality is a good thing.</p><p>But at first they were obnoxious, and unwelcome. They were always nosing at his secrets, getting in his space, asking questions. The Mighty Nein are an abrasive group of confrontational assholes, and Caleb is the suspicious, hostile shell of a very broken Bren. So he’s on his guard constantly. Always half-adversarial and withdrawn, because they’re loud, and dangerous, and just crazy enough to make him crawl out of his skin.</p><p>It’s not “the Mighty Nien,” it’s “him and Nott, putting up with these other freaks.” And ironically the only one he’s sure of is Nott: the-klepto-goblin-girl, not Jester: the-to-nice-to-be-genuine, or Beauregard: the-fellow-fucked-up-Empire-Kid. Which is what makes him regret this moment, because really he was...well...</p><p>Wrong.</p><p>He’s sitting in the shade of a nearby building, just out of sight line from the guards at the gate, bouncing his leg, and stroking his cat. And struggling not to feel like an idiot. An alive idiot. A heart still beating, lungs still breathing, anonymous idiot. But an idiot none-the-less. The exposure still itches, still rankles under his skin, turning his stomach sour. The caustic narration in his brain is busy dissecting himself post-mortem, recalling the sequence of his failures over, and over, and over, and over, and over.</p><p>Living with no rights is better than being fucking dead, he reminds himself carefully.</p><p>Peeking around the edge of the building, he watches Jester appear at the gate. She looks happy at least. No obvious agitation, as far as he can tell. Which means things have probably gone ok for her. She’s fine. This is fine. Caleb just has to get over himself, because Jester’s business is the important thing anyway. Nobody cares about his shit.</p><p>Hopefully.</p><p>“Quick fucking meeting,” the unwelcome side of himself hisses.</p><p>Not dead. He asserts back, with gritted teeth.</p><p>Laboriously Caleb climbs to his feet, as Jester comes up, the familiar cracks and tweaks running down his body as he does. At least one joint always pops whenever he moves these days, like his body is composed of rusted hinges. Technically serviceable, but undeniably weatherbeaten, so they still do their job, but you can’t exactly call them pretty anymore. Jester is smiling brightly, and the wizard forces up a gentle smile to match it. Just focus on what’s important.</p><p>Jester’s package is important.</p><p>“How was it?” He asks, falling in with her.</p><p>As they walk he keeps behind her shoulder, just exactly far enough to be a half step in her wake. She’s clearly in the lead this way. Clearly the one you should be looking at. This way she has to speak just a little over her shoulder, but he can see her at all times: where her hands are and what her mouth is doing. So he’s got the shadow.</p><p>“It. Was. Really pretty in there.” Jester says.</p><p>The description isn’t very insightful. Caleb could have guessed that. Trying to get in has been a royal pain in his ass. Which usually means things are too good for him. One of the rare moments when dirt gets noticed, not finery, and his anonymity turns against him.</p><p>“People were kinda stupid.” Jester is still saying. “But I did talk to the Traveler so everything’s cool.”</p><p>Caleb puppeteers the right signs of friendly interest from his body, nodding along appropriately. In his experience, tokens of his attention work best as either: a nod he punctuates at the end of every statement, and strong assertion; or in the middle of every complex sentence, and story. Give or take a few. Jester happens to use a lot of opinionated statements, elaborate stories, and speak quite rapidly. So his nods of agreement come at intervals of about every five seconds.</p><p>“Also, I don’t have any money.” She adds, winding a blue curl around her finger.</p><p>He relates to that statement more than anything else she’s ever said.</p><p>“That’s ok. I have a little bit of money.” Caleb says, looking down at her kindly. “Do you need some? I have about fifty gold, do you want me to give you some?”</p><p>His fingers drift toward the sly inner pockets where his coin is carefully hidden. But he’s interrupted, before he can say or do anything else.</p><p>“I mean that’s about as much as<em> I</em> have now. It’s so stupid though.”</p><p>Caleb stops dead in his tracks, quietly dumbfounded. Fifty gold...and she’s complaining?</p><p>For his careful economizing, that’s more than enough to last for months. He’s made it by with discarded coppers no one else bothered to pick out of gutters and sewer drains, let alone more than that. Fifty gold is an almost disgusting amount of money to carry about on one person. It takes a moment for Jester to notice he’s no longer following her, but when she does, she looks up at him, eyebrows raised.</p><p>“That’s a lot of money.” He murmurs soberly.</p><p>Jester rolls her eyes, which is somehow worse than the pouting. In fact it’s one of the most irritating displays he’s ever seen...which remembering that insufferable carnival man, Mollymauk...is saying quite a bit.</p><p>“It’s not, Caleb!” She whines, wrinkling her button nose in a childish pout.</p><p>“It is!” He insists. A thin, cutting edge of the real hostility—the barbed distrust he’s careful to conceal around these people—peeking through, as it slices past his reservation like a razor.</p><p>“It’s <em>NOT</em>!” The tiefling girl insists right back, face darkening to something stormy.</p><p>“That’s more money than my parents ever made in their entire life...” He says, almost amazed by her pettiness. He’s too distracted and irritated, grappling with how unreasonable she’s acting at the moment, to even have any qualms about the revelation.</p><p>“That’s what I made like, everyday, for like, allowance!” Jester bursts out sourly, rolling her eyes again.</p><p>The <em>insolence</em> of that retort leaves him speechless. The unparalleled ignorance of it, so spoiled and entitled, that he can find absolutely nothing to say. It’s so insensitive and privileged it’s frankly offensive. As if those staggering riches are what she deserved, having never worked a day of her life for any of it.</p><p>She can call him stinky and jeer at his appearance, because she knows fuck-all about his shit. Because she’s never gone hungry a day in her life, never bled, never begged, never cowered. Never <em>crawled</em>. Never fought for every breath, never screamed because it was all the escape you had, never dressed up like a doll because the unwanted hands demanded a toy that was perfect. She’s never slept, and lived, and breathed in the shit, and so she can mock it. Without knowing what the unwashed filth can buy.</p><p>In the end, no words come. And for once, Caleb doesn’t want a retort. For that one moment the social awkwardness that would usually have scourged him for not knowing how to look and talk to her, is blessedly silent. It’s just anger, and a kind of frigid distain, that makes him immune to the usual need to cater to her conversational standards.</p><p>I guess I’m just dirt to you, then.</p><p>Reaching into his pocket, Caleb finds the soggy mug still weighing down his coat, and pulls out a handful. None of them, not even Nott, understand what this means to him. And why he defiles himself with it. Only a windup soldier knows that. Locking eyes with Jester, he defiantly glares her down, and smears the mud across his face like a mask. Because it <em>is</em> a mask. And it’s all she deserves to have of him.</p><p>Well you can fucking look at my dirt, if that’s all you want to see.</p><p>He tosses the last of the mud back to the ground, still glaring Jester down, and is pleased—savagely triumphant—to see something behind her eyes crumple like tissue paper. It’s only there for a flash, and it’s almost hidden behind her own irritation, even while it glimmers for that vulnerable split second. But the hurt is there.</p><p>Good.</p><p>He turns sharply on his heel, and storms off. Behind him Jester’s voice calls out sullenly, “Caleb, I didn’t mean to make you put your shit on your face again...” but he doesn’t acknowledge her. Because it is what she’d meant.</p><p>She’d meant every unspoken slur of it.</p><p>&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;</p><p>When he confronts the disagreement later, it’s not long as far as this particular dispute with Jester is concerned. But it’s so much, much longer since he’s resolved any argument by facing it head on. Caleb Widowgast is a coward, and Bren is a hunted animal.</p><p>He doesn’t stay for consequences. He’s turned running away from his issues into an art form. It’s an anything works, no holds barred, propensity to flee in any way he can. Be it through lies, or numbness, or sprinting himself off his legs, he’ll choose the exit door any chance he gets. Until he faces Jester.</p><p>And for the first time in more years than he can remember, he doesn’t turn tail and run.</p><p>His hands are shaking, and it’s a struggle to see what he’s doing as he pats over the corpses. When he straightens up again, just looking at Jester sends shards of ice through his stomach, sick with dread. Walking on jellied legs and a racing heartbeat, Caleb moves across to the tiefling girl.</p><p>“Jester, will you—uh—will you come look at my eyes, if they’re a little bloodshot?” He says, already loosing his nerve and seizing on the first half-plausible excuse he can grasp at. “I’m not feeling well after my, uh...encounter with the rats.”</p><p>She turns and looks up at him with a little jump of surprise at the sound of his voice. And he feels <em>awful</em>. Both at her obvious surprise, and the little tissue paper crumple in her eyes again. Another flash of vulnerable guilt, that peeks out for just a moment.</p><p>When he’s standing this close to her, he’s struck vividly by her appearance. The smudge of dirt on her forehead. A bruise forming on the side of her jaw. Her pretty curls, caught in a messy thatch. How her dainty boots are splashed with sewer water. She’s giving up so many personal beauties for the sake of this group. Getting scars on her skin, and dirt on her nice clothes, because she’s self sacrificing.</p><p>You’re just a stupid piece of shit, Bren Ermendrud, the relentless critic snarls at him.</p><p>Through all the stains and fatigue she grins, saying “Sure!” and reaches out to cup his face.</p><p>He lasts for all of half a second, before her hands nearly brush his skin and he flinches back involuntarily, stepping out of her hands. Stupid. Stupid. He can’t fake this. It’s too close, and the others might be watching, and this is painful enough as it is without trying to maintain some useless lie he came up with under pressure.</p><p>“Wait,” he falters, not quite bold enough to grab her elbow, but hovering with his hand just short of it. “Come over here...come over here...”</p><p>He awkwardly shuffles away toward a shadowy corner, half expecting her not to follow. After all, why would she? He was a dick to her. It would be natural if she didn’t want to talk after that, or really be around him at all...</p><p>But she does follow. With less than her usual bounce she quietly moves after him, tail swishing gently in her wake. Everything about her is subdued, silent and careful, and the reserve doesn’t help his guilt any. Just shows him all the more graphically what a mess he’s made of this. Like he doesn’t have enough sins on his head already.</p><p>When he reaches the wall, he stands in front of it, not ready to look at her yet. And Jester waits, still and respectful like she absolutely <em>never</em> is. But the words don’t come. He knows they never will. Nothing is lining up behind his teeth, but he can’t just stare at the wall like a vegetable forever. Characteristic as that would be.</p><p>He’s spent eleven fucking years of his life doing just that, after all.</p><p>The thought brings a grimace to his face, and a last ditch effort to push anything out of his mouth that will fill the silence, and break him out of the the acidic merry-go-round his thoughts are trapped on. He’s so tired of feeling like shit. If he could just find a way to shut it up for even one minute. The bitter pungency was a useful tool at first: a driving force to keep him on his legs, that helped to push his stagnation back. Now it’s just a spiteful companion that he’s so, <em>so </em>sick of listening to.</p><p>“Um. There was gold in there,” he starts, and the feeble attempt makes him want to grimace again. First thing out of his mouth: <em>Um</em>. What a good start.</p><p>He turns around and Jester is shuffling back and forth on her feet, not quite looking at him. The nervous avoidance looks painful on her, so much better suited to the anxiety he wears like a suit, than her own unharnessed exuberance. He just wants to fix this.</p><p>“I would like you to have it.” He bites out, shoving it past his lips before he can overthink it again. “It’s um...more than I had before. Um.”</p><p>Fishing in his pocket he brings out the coins he just scavenged from the corpses. It’s a morbid offering, but it’s all he has to give her. While he can subsist on quite a scanty livelihood, that doesn’t mean he never spends money recklessly. And magical studies have a tendency to make him very, very reckless.</p><p>“Uh...here is a hundred gold that were on those people,” he says, holding it out to her, without looking at the person he’s speaking to. “So you take it, because I know that you need money...”</p><p>“Caleb. I don’t...” Jester starts and then breaks off, and this time the wilting is painfully obvious, humbling her whole body under its influence.</p><p>But she does need it. More than him. She’s important. Good. He’s maybe, sort of, weakly starting to believe that: that anyone can be as good as they appear on the surface. Not as carefree or joyful as she appears—he’s seen behind that when she cracks enough to show it—but not...Not evil. Not tainted.</p><p>Not like him. Because he is stained, and twisted, and unworthy. He’s just a guilty man, scrabbling for any semblance of redemption he can sink his bloody fingernails into. And he let her see it. The venom behind his walls.</p><p>But he doesn’t know how to say that, so he shoves the coins into her hand instead, as if they’re meant to represent it.</p><p>“I know that you need money...” he mumbles sheepishly. Then he musters himself, searching for the sense of humor he knows how to fake without feeling, and play the whole ordeal off in a more cheerful way. “And I’m very uh, you know, look at this.” He flexes a scrawny arm with no change, and pinches at the bottom just to really make it (he hopes) funny.</p><p>“That was really, really strong. You look super strong.” Jester says with playful seriousness. But she isn’t laughing.</p><p>“That’s, ah...sad and funny at the same time.” He says, in a last ditch attempt to maybe make this whole conversation less painful. It doesn’t really work, and he awkwardly sticks his hands in his pockets, just to have somewhere to put them. “You carry the gold, because I can’t carry it all.”</p><p>“Ok,” Jester agrees, “but I—I’m not keeping it just for me, you know.”</p><p>“That’s fine...” Caleb agrees softly.</p><p>He wouldn’t even object if she were. She deserves that. And maybe she’d make the best use of it anyway. His own expenses are basically a bottomless pit for him to toss good money down, and hope that maybe, <em>maybe</em> he gets a worthy reward back. Better to keep good coin away from his selfish obsession.</p><p>“It’s for both of us!” and finally her tail perks up a little, as she grins. It’s a small grin, but it counts none-the-less, and it’s better than the kicked puppy remorse.</p><p>“<em>Ja</em>, well, that’s why you wanted money from—I assume from your mother—was to...um...you know, to help us out in the position we are in.” He says, scratching the base of his neck and then immediately cursing himself for the slip up. He put his hands in his pockets specifically to keep his cool, and now taking them out again makes the fidgeting more obvious, because it will look weird if he puts his hand back a second time.</p><p>Jester doesn’t seem to notice, and she looks a little flushed as she says, “Well of course.” And maybe, he’s actually succeeded in making her feel a little appreciated.</p><p>That’s better than he was hoping for, honestly.</p><p>“<em>Ja</em>. So you take this.” Caleb agrees, nodding toward the money in her hand. “You’re a better um...” He doesn’t have a word for what she’s better at.</p><p>It’s more that he’s just worse.</p><p>Finally he gestures awkwardly at his head, latching onto vague excuses and humor again. “You know I am always thinking about things, and I’m not very good with uh—with uh—with amounts, and money.”</p><p>Both lies.</p><p>“So. You carry it.” He finishes awkwardly.</p><p>“Caleb...” Jester falters. “Thank you. And...I’m sorry.”</p><p>He doesn’t know what to say to that. It seems so. Unnecessary. He’s the dickwad here, so he’s the one that should be making amends. Hearing her apologize makes his insides curl with discomfort, and a creeping chill of shame. Because...</p><p>She shouldn’t have to.</p><p>“You know, I just had a really bad day today.” Caleb lies, bobbing his head to try and make it more believable. “That’s all it was.”</p><p>Another lie.</p><p>“Ok.” Jester says in a small voice, which means she doesn’t believe it.</p><p>He didn’t expect her to, the lie is just to avoid speaking the truth, even if she knows he’s doing it.</p><p>“I guess I’m sorry as well...” he mumbles.</p><p>It’s the most unsatisfying apology ever, because he means so much more than that. What is there to condemn about ignorance? What’s wrong with that, really? So what if she is a little insensitive. How can he presume to judge. She’s inexperienced, and clueless, and maybe pretty blunt. But she shouldn’t have to apologize...</p><p>It’s not wrong.</p><p>She’s naive. She’s never shattered to the core, or bled to keep from drowning. Never stolen, and starved, and eaten trash out of the gutter. Jester has never folded, and sold things, and rolled over for enough to eat.</p><p>What a blessing.</p><p>Lashing out at her, because she has no callouses like him, is just cruel. Just because she’s less wounded than him, he’s going to make her hurt for his scars? It’s a sick joke. Really, he should be happy for her. Because somehow she gets to keep all the blindness he can’t remember anymore. She’s innocent still. Wide eyed and hopeful, in a way he’ll never get to see the world again.</p><p><em>Yes</em>, she’s sheltered. She fucking <em>should</em> be.</p><p>He would never wish her even an hour of his pain.</p><p>Please don’t stop being ignorant Jester. There’s so much that leaves burdens to learn. The innocence you possess is a priceless gift you’re too naive to know about. So be free, and silly, and clueless. You don’t deserve what I know...what the victims, and the killers, and the tyrants all learned. Nobody does.</p><p>So please, please, please, stay foolish Jester.</p><p>Be better than me.</p>
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<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Reconcile</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Trigger Warning! For: Referenced Self Loathing, Referenced Abuse, And Implied/Referenced Non-Con</p><p>These warnings should be on the lighter side, and are only referred to as issues that have been resolved, but they are present, so be aware.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Which brings him to this moment. A quiet surrender that doesn’t happen all at once, and doesn’t mean much to anyone else. But he marks it, like a beacon. The others will catch on later, but for him, this is when it really lets go. When he really changes for the better.</p><p>The Xhorhaus is new and shiny, which means of course they can’t rest content until they’ve absolutely ruined it. Because the Mighty Nein are idiots. Idiots, with astronomical cosmic powers at their hands. Which is an unholy combination that should never, ever be mixed together. They’re people that have toppled political figures, highjacked ships, outsmarted slavers, and slain dragons. (Albeit just one, and he wasn’t fully grown, but still)...They’re dangerous, and powerful. But because they’re stupid, they naturally decide to employ all those phenomenal powers for interior decorating.</p><p>Sometimes their group really, really remind him of a bunch of dumb cats: entertaining themselves with pointless bits of string, or empty boxes people have thrown away.</p><p>But when they pull shit like this, he can’t help but acknowledge: his friends are capable of some pretty amazing feats too. It takes his breath away, when he walks into the tower, powerfully struck by the incredible beauty of this creation. He already knew about the fucking sixty foot tree (on top of what was already a very high tower), but it’s the first time he’s seen the tower’s interior. Together Jester, Caduceus, and Fjord have sculpted out a giant stone hot-tub directly underneath where the tree is planted, so that the twisted mass of roots comes sweeping down into the water like a giant pillar. After touching the water, the root system extends outward, webbing the bottom of the tub, and covering a large portion of the floor like twisted organic filigree. It’s incredible.</p><p>He doesn’t have more than a half second to admire it though, before Beauregard is bawling “FUCK YEA! HOT TUB NIGHT!” directly by his ear, and rips her crop top off. The flash of her skin has him whipping his head away so fast, it cracks his neck, and then there’s a blue blur at the corner of his eye. With a gleeful “wheeee!” Jester cannonballs into the water, sending a geyser up to baptize the roots. Then the circular stone room is echoing with voices bouncing off the walls, and he can’t hear himself think anymore.</p><p>Padding quietly in own little bubble of silence, Caleb picks his way across the floor to the other side of the room, where he’s loosely hidden behind the tree. The hot tub room doesn’t have any screens, or private corners to change clothes—probably because Jester decorated it—so this is about as private as he can get. He can make it work, and he strips quickly anyway.</p><p>It gives him a second of pause when he looks at his arm wraps, before he’s entirely sure what to do about them. He’s so used to wearing these, they’re like a second skin he carries with him everywhere. But it will be awkward to wear them in the hot tub. The others are sure to notice. But also...really. Why would he? They know about them now. Know about all the blemishes underneath his bandages, and the ugly history even further down.</p><p>He’s sort of got no reason to hide them any longer.</p><p>It makes his fingers shake to do it, but not exactly from outright fear. More like a fear of fear. He’s carefully hidden these from everyone, and most of all himself, for so long that exposing them makes him a little apprehensive. What if something happens? What if he doesn’t like it, when he’s exposed.</p><p>But the bandages fall away, and it’s...not exactly anything. He looks down at his arms, and it doesn’t do anything to him, to make himself look. They’re an unnaturally pale, stricken white color from being deprived of sunlight for years, yet they don’t repulse him like they should. Actually. They’re just...Just arms. Body parts. Like any other human’s.</p><p>He doesn’t know what to call the feeling, because it’s not exactly a relief per-say. It’s been coming over him too gradually to feel like that. There’s never been a moment where he noticed the change, until now. It’s just shifted, like nothing’s different, but somehow his new normal is not the same as before. The sensation is a little too strange to be wholly pleasant, but it doesn’t cause any pain. Just a vague surprise that makes him blink at his hand, as he realizes that at some point he’s begun looking at it different.</p><p>It’s the same when he gets in the water. He wades into the pool and the heat radiates through his muscles like a balm, comforting sore spots and bruises he’s forgotten about till now. But he doesn’t feel afraid of it. No repulsion, no dread. Sinking to his knees brings the water up to his shoulders, lapping just beneath his chin. His dirt is flaking away, gently dislodged by tiny ripples, but he isn’t panicking.</p><p>That’s another change he hasn’t noticed creeping over him. Somewhere along the line he’s begun to feel it. For so long his mud has been a carefully maintained coping mechanism. A way to make himself faceless, and repulsive. Something that turns away all the eyes on his skin, and masks the features of his face from view. Because it hurts to be desirable. To be attractive against his will, and seductive without any say in it. Being clean feels vulnerable and exposed, hunted by his own pretty face.</p><p>When he’s just a muddy beggar no one thinks thoughts about him. He’s not a wizard, or a soldier, or a tempter, in this filthy, stinking disguise. Without the ritual of washing, there are no frozen eyes to judge when his shoulders aren’t straight, no clammy hands scrubbing across his limbs. No whistles in the street, no watchers looking after him, no shadowy admirers drawn from corners in bars. He’s nobody.</p><p>Forgettable.</p><p>Lately though, the dirt on his body has begun to feel like just that. Dirt. Not a shield, not an escape, not a defense. He’s started to notice all the sensations that used to be less important than the reason for putting up with them. The mud that cakes under his nails, how his scalp is gritty and itchy, the fine silt rubbed into every one of the cracks in his dry skin. He’s started to notice how raw he feels, and strangely...the feeling bothers him a little bit.</p><p>He swirls splayed fingers through the water, feeling it brush across his arms. The scars are all oversensitive after years of constantly being covered up, and without his bandages even the slight heat and pressure of the water raises goosebumps on his shoulders. But it’s not unpleasant. Doesn’t saw on his nerves like it usually would. It’s not an irritation anymore, just skin, that hasn’t been touched in a long time. In this moment, kneeling with the water just lapping at his chin, he blinks. And makes a decision.</p><p>He’s going to wash his hair.</p><p>That prospect should frighten him. It’s been so long since he’s bathed himself with any kind of desire to look clean. Over the years he’s put up with rain, and swimming, and carefully navigated baths to ease his aching muscles. But he doesn’t bathe. Hasn’t intentionally washed himself, for himself, in years...maybe decades. Five years ago he put up with other people stripping and scrubbing him, like a dirty dish or a piece of laundry. Before that he scrubbed himself, because dust under your fingernails got you punished at mealtimes, and smelling like sweat got you bruises. And before that everything is so long ago, and so utterly divorced from himself that it feels like it all happened to a different person.</p><p>But somehow none of those things translate into dread now. He ducks under the water, feeling it fully close upon his head in a way he hasn’t allowed it to in so, so long, and it just. Happens. No pain, no fear, no regret. There’s no knee jerk reaction pulling him back, no vice constricting around his ribs, just that same strange, familiar, foreign indifference. When he sinks down to cross his legs on the bottom of the shallow pool, nothing happens, and when he sweeps his head back so his hair swishes through the water, it doesn’t claw at him.</p><p>He just <em>is</em>.</p><p>As if it’s as simple as being clean now, when before he was dirty.</p><p>Caleb breaks the surface with a spluttering gasp, after holding himself down until his lungs have started to burn. Sound comes rushing back, and he can hear the clamor of the Mighty Nien on the other side of the root system, bickering about something trivial like they always do. This time though, it catches at him a little bit, and he stops to listen. Not because he has the least idea what they’re talking about, or any interest if he did, but because he’s only just now noticed how normal it sounds to him.</p><p>Somehow their clamor has started being something he takes for granted, always hovering around him. He tunes them out half the time, because he’ll loose hold of his sanity if he doesn’t; but just like Frumpkin’s purring, that’s morphed somewhere along the line to letting them soothe him in the background. Their racket is like comforting white noise now: something that doesn’t bother him anymore.</p><p>The sound of water swishing brings him back, and he returns to himself to find Caduceus wading up to him. The firbolg is so large that the water only ripples halfway up his thigh, and to Caleb’s kneeling position the cleric is absolutely gigantic. But he’s smiling in that characteristic sleepy way, lips caught in that nearly perpetual dopey grin, and he splashes up to Caleb’s side.</p><p>“Thought you might want some soap.” Caduceus rumbles, holding out a bar of soap and a rag.</p><p>It feels a little strange, to realize he’s been noticed like that. He takes the offering silently, and holds it in his hand for a moment, not really sure how Caduceus knew what he was thinking. “<em>Danke</em>.” He says at last, when he loops back around to noticing how long he’s let this silence hang awkwardly. Caduceus doesn’t appear to mind, and when Caleb looks up at his face the firbolg is still standing their placidly, smiling about nothing in particular.</p><p>“Not a problem,” Caduceus says with a gentle nod, and a slow sleepy blink. “There’s probably going to be a cannonball contest over here, when you’re done.” He adds over his shoulder, as he plods back the way he came.</p><p>Caleb watches him go, still a little nonplussed. Then with a start he remembers the soap, and jumps to begin lathering it. Then he bathes.</p>
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